BRARY vrtjinr or DIEGO 3 1822 01108 8077 V.I (I- x- WRITINGS OF SEVERN TEACILE WALLIS MEMORIAL EDITION VOL. I ADDRESSES AND POEMS BALTIMORE JOHN MUKPHY & CO. 1896 CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION : PAGE. Prefatory, ... v Biographical, viii ADDRESSES : Leisure: its Moral and Political Economy, .... 3 Valedictory to the Graduating Class of the University of Mary- land, 41 Discourse on the Life and Character of George Peabody, - - 63 Address to the Law Class of the University of Maryland, - 103 Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of Chief Justice Taney, 139 Address on behalf of the Lee Memorial Association, - - 151 Address delivered before the Schools of Art and Design of the Maryland Institute, 167 Address at the Eighth Annual Commencement of the McDonogh Institute, 193 The Johns Hopkins University in its Relations to Baltimore, 217 Notes, 247 POEMS : The Blessed Hand, 255 A Prayer for Peace, 258 The Last of the Hours, 261 Truth and Reason, 263 Beauty and Faith, 265 The Exile's Prayer, 267 The First Grave, 268 The Spectre of Colalto, 270 In Fort Warren, 277 iii iv CONTENTS. PAGE. Worship, 278 Dreams, ----------- 280 Life, 283 Christmas, 289 Christmas 1851, 290 Christmas Eve at Sea, 292 To an Infant, 294 Memnon, 298 God's Acre Friedhof, 299 Starlight, 299 Quo Fata Trahunt, 300 For an Album, 301 For an Album, --------- 302 Dejection, 304 To a Friend, 306 To the Same, 309 To a Friend, 310 No More ! 312 The Curfew, 314 Midnight, 315 The Fount, 317 To - , 318 To - , 319 To - , 320 To - , 323 Angels, 324 To - , 325 To , 330 To , ---------- 330 TV QQ<> 1 I) . .--...-.-- OO-j From ( 'alderon, --------- 333 Notes, 335 INTRODUCTION. PREFATORY. r I iHE present edition is the first collection of the scattered _J_ writings in prose and verse, literary, critical and political, of the late Severn Teackle Wallis, who died in Baltimore, April 11, 1894. Its publication now is due to the earnest desire of a number of his personal friends, in the first place, to possess such a complete collection of his writings, and secondly, to their belief that the people of Maryland, and all who knew him, will be glad to have such a permanent memorial of his useful, active life, and of his many and various gifts and accomplishments. Not long before his death, Mr. Wallis had printed at his own expense, for distribution among some of his intimate friends, a limited edition of the Addresses, Lec- tures and Reviews, which form part of the contents of the first volume of this edition. Very soon after his death, there was held in Baltimore a meeting which resulted in the formation of a Wallis Memorial Association, one of the specified objects of which was the publication of a Memorial Edition of his writings, to be followed, in time, if the funds of the Association should prove sufficient, by the erection of a Memorial bust or statue in his honor in some appropriate public place in the city of Baltimore, and by the foundation of one or more scholarships or prizes to bear his name and perpetuate his memory. v vi INTR OD UCTION. With this view, officers of the Association were elected, Execu- tive and Finance Committees appointed, and subscriptions were received. The response to the circular issued by the Association setting forth its objects, being deemed sufficiently encouraging to justify the Association in undertaking the present publication, Messrs. Thomas W. Hall, Arthur George Brown and John J. Donaldson were requested to act as a Publishing Committee, and authorized to make the necessary arrangements for editing and printing. The Committee were fortunate enough to secure at the outset, the valuable services of Dr. William Hand Browne, Professor of English Literature in the Johns Hopkins University, to see the entire work through the press, and the Committee here desire to express their high appreciation of the value of Dr. Browne's assistance, and of the care and fidelity with which he has per- formed the labor assigned to him. In addition to the Lectures, Addresses and Reviews, collected and privately circulated in the lifetime of Mr. Wallis, as already mentioned, the first volume of this edition contains a number of short poems and occasional verses written at various times and in varying moods, which have never before been collected, and many of which have never before been printed. These are now published as they appear in a manuscript volume, in which in his later years, and after evident careful correction and revision, they had been transcribed in Mr. Wallis's own neat and characteristic hand-writing. The only liberty taken by the Editor, has been the omission in some instances of proper names and initials; while the notes, which were originally prefixed by Mr. Wallis to some of the poems, have been printed together at the end of the volume. The s','co:id volume is devoted to a selection from Mr. Wallis's political writings of a permanent and historical character, prefer- INTRODUCTION. vn ence being given to those prepared by him, while a member of the Maryland Legislature in 1861, not only because of the light which they throw upon the events of that time, but because they constitute a most important chapter in Mr. Wallis's life, in regard to which he has expressed the desire that any judgment of his motives or his actions, should be made to rest upon these very documents. No vindication is necessary, but the part which Mr. Wallis bore in the events of 1860-61, in Maryland, was too conspicuous and too honorable, to permit, in the judgment of his friends, this important chapter of his life to be passed over in silence. For the same reason the Letter to the Hon. John Sher- man, is included in the volume, the contents of which must be regarded as partly biographical, if not auto-biographical. Many of the papers contained in the second volume have heretofore only been accessible in their scattered and official form, as part of the Journal and Proceedings of the General Assembly of Maryland in 1861. The third and fourth volumes contain Mr. Wallis's two published books on Spain, for many years almost, if not quite, out of print. The first, entitled Glimpses of Spain ; or Notes of an unfinished Tour in 1847, was published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York, in 1849, and has since been reprinted by them. The other on Spain : Her Institutions, Politics and Public Men : A Sketch, was published by Messrs. Ticknor, Reed & Fields, Boston, 1853. The copyright in both books has long since expired, and their republication in the present memorial edition is in response to a very generally expressed desire on the part of Mr. Wallis's friends to possess them in this form. Amid all the exactions of a busy professional life, Mr. Wallis was a frequent contributor to the daily press, and his unsigned articles on the current topics of the day were often recognized as his, from the terseness and pungency of expression, the wit some- viii INTRODUCTION. times playful and sometimes caustic, and the wealth and appo- siteness of illustration and argument which were the familiar ear-marks of his style. No attempt has been made to include in the present collection, any of these writings of an ephemeral character, from the impossibility, as it seemed to the Committee, of reproducing the personal and local coloring and atmosphere, which gave them at the time, their special interest and effect. They are only alluded to here, in order that the present collection may not be supposed to furnish the full measure of Mr. Wallis's remarkable intellectual activity and fertility. There can be no doubt that his contributions to literature of a durable and perma- nent character, would have been much more extensive, had not the demands of his profession so fully occupied his time, and taxed so severely a physical strength and constitution which were never robust. BIOGRAPHICAL. To the foregoing statement of the origin and scope of this Memorial Publication of Mr. Wallis's writings, it is deemed proper to append a brief sketch of his career, with some few facts relating to his parentage and family and to the place which he held in the State and city where he was born, and lived and died. Severn Teackle Wallis was born in the city of Baltimore, on the 8th of September, 1816, being the second son of Philip Wallis and Elizabeth Cu.stis Teackle, his wife, daughter of Severn Teackle of Talbot county, Maryland, after whom he was named. Both of Mr. Wallis's parents came of families long-settled upon the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. His grandfather, Severn Teackle, married February 23d, 1786, Lucretia Edmondson, daughter of Pollard Edmondson of Talbot county. The Edmondsons were descended from John Edmondson, one of the very early Quaker settlers in Maryland, the personal friend and correspondent of 1NTR OD UCTION. i x John Fox, the Founder of the Society. Fox, in his Journal (Part second, London, 1709) mentions two visits which he paid to John Edmondson, at his hospitable home on Tred haven Creek near Easton, on the 18th of July and 3d of August, 1672. John Edmondson was the second Quaker elected to the Colonial Legis- lature of Maryland. Pollard Edmondson, by whose time, how- ever, the family had become Episcopalians, was also a member of the Colonial Legislature, and a delegate from Talbot county to the Convention of 1776, which framed the first Constitution of the State of Maryland. He was afterwards a member of the State Legislature under that Constitution. Philip Wallis, the father of Severn Teackle Wallis, was the sou and only child of Samuel Wallis of Kent county, where the family was settled in the early part of the 18th century. Inheriting a considerable landed estate in Kent and Queen Anne counties, from his father, young Philip Wallis, after leaving Washington College, Kent County, Maryland, studied law in the office of the Hon. James A. Bayard, in Wilmington, Delaware, but never appears to have practised the profession. After his marriage to Miss Teackle, and the birth of his eldest son, Philip, he removed in 1816 from Easton to Baltimore, where all his other children, four sons and three daughters, were born, and where he lived in a house on North Charles street nearly opposite the Cathedral and the residence of the Archbishop, until he finally removed in 1837 to Mississippi, where he owned a plantation near Yazoo city. He is represented to have been a man of taste and cultivation, and appears to have encouraged the early bent of his son Teackle, towards literature, especially poetry and the classics. He died October 23d, 1844, being killed by the explosion of the boiler of a steamboat on the Ohio river. On the maternal side, Mr. Wallis was descended from the Reverend Thomas Teackle, a native of Gloucestershire, England, who settled in Accomack county, Virginia, in 1652. He was the son of a Royalist, who was killed in the service of King Charles I, and was the first clergyman of the Established Church of Eng- land settled on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He received grants of land in 1652 and 1668, and his parish at one time x INTE OD UCTION. included the whole of Accomack and Northampton counties. His estate, "Craddock," upon which he lived, and where he died and was buried, January 26th, 1695, still retains the name he gave it. Mr. Wallis's maternal grandfather, Severn Teackle, for whom he was named, was an officer in the Revolutionary army, a lieutenant in 1776 in the 9th Virginia Regiment "on Conti- nental Establishment," a captain in the same regiment in 1779, afterwards transferred to the 5th Regiment, Virginia Line. Cap- tain Teackle was taken prisoner either at Brandy wine or German- town, in which latter engagement his regiment was conspicuous for its gallantry, losing nearly half of its number in killed and wounded. In a memorandum appended by Mr. Wallis, apparently in 1893, to a copy of the "Genealogical Record (MS.) of the Teackle and Edmondson Families" in his possession, he says: "I have not analyzed the record so as to notice whether there were any inter- marriages with the Severn family. There was a young gentleman of that name, a lieutenant in the same regiment with my grand- father." The records of the Virginia Land Office show a grant of land in Northampton county to John Severn, on October 8th, 1644, and the intimacy between the Severn family and the descendants of the Reverend Thomas Teackle, appears from the frequency of the use of Severn as a baptismal name in all the families of the Teackle connection, the Upshurs, Eyres, Bowdoins, Parkers and others. Of a large family consisting, as already mentioned, of five sons and three daughters, Mr. Wallis was for many years prior to his death the sole survivor, with the exception of one brother, who is still living, Mr. John S. Wallis, formerly of New Orleans, but now a resident of Baltimore. Mr. Wallis's father died, as stated, in 1-S44, his mother in 1852. Of the sons, only the eldest, Philip, and the youngest, John S., ever married. The three daughters died unmarried ; the eldest, Miss Elizabeth Custis Wallis, lived with her brother in Baltimore for sonic years and until her death in 18een a stumbling-block in the way of knight-errantry, and in our case it is as formidable an obstacle as in any other. And alas ! even when Sir Tristram or Sir Lancelot girds on his armor, with a righteous zeal, and goes out in pursuit of the oppressor, is not Sir Pel leas or Sir Percevale retained for the knave, and does not one of them sit mounted at his gate, with his very best lance in rest? Nay, if Lancelot and Tristram, themselves, had been spoken to in time, are there not many chances that they would have been upon the other side? They would perhaps have thought better of the oppressor, in that event ; for we see much more clearly through the glass, when we are inside the house, than when we look in from without. The time has never been, I glory in saying, when the right has fallen to the ground for the lack of a lawyer to defend it, at any and every cost, whether of liberty, or life, or toil, or fortune. But the honor belongs altogether to the noble men who do these good works. It is an honor which they reflect on the profession not honor borrowed from it. They are brave men, who in any other condition or calling would have stood up for the weak against the strong devoted men, who would have felt, anywhere, that the charities of life are the chiefest of its duties and its pleasures. All that they owe to their profession is the opportunity which it affords them the learning, the discipline and the experience which make their energy efficient the countenance and sympathy which uphold their hands. Germane to this subject is another professional pretension, which it seems to me that candor does not justify at all events, in the broad sense in which it is generally urged. I 116 COMMENCEMENT refer to the claim, so commonly set up on behalf of the Bar, that the world is indebted to it for free institutions and their preservation. Here, again, I am persuaded that the glory belongs to individuals and not to the profession. What the Barons of England crushed with their gauntleted hands, were but the long contrived devices of lawyers, who had pandered to usurpation. Hume speaks but the truth, when he tells us that the great rights established and consecrated by Magna Charta had to struggle long " with the chicanery of lawyers, supported by the influence of power." Go over the whole history of English freedom, and ever against the illustrious champions in whose fame we rejoice, you will find a herd arrayed, of " vile prerogative fellows " equally the offspring of your profession and full of its learning and intellect who wrought all night, like Penelope, to unravel the shroud which genius and courage had woven, all day, for tyranny. Turn back a quarter of a century before the day when Lord Coke became immortal as the framer of the Petition of Right, and you will blush to see him, as Solicitor General of " that thrice noble and vertuous Queen Elizabeth, of ever blessed memory," and Speaker of her faithful Commons, engineering her subsidy- bills through the House, like a slave, and laying the lives of himself and his fellows " prostrate at her feet to be com- manded." You remember, how, even in his old age, in the Preface to the First Institute, lie chatters about her " roseal beauty" but that is nothing to the adulation with which Mr. Speaker grovelled before her, and told her how " under her happy government, they lived upon honey, and sucked upon every sweet flower." For himself, he assured her that he was but a corpus opacum, in the absence of her " bright ADDRESS. 117 shilling wisdom." He must have been more opaque than he- said, if her thrice virtuous Majesty did not see through all that. But why should we go back to the Tudors for proof that the learning and ability of your profession are not always with right and liberty against power? Young as you are, the annals of your own times and your own land are full of the sad story of professional subserviency, cowardice and prostitution. It is part of the history which you have been compelled to read. It is bound up with the law which you have had to study. You cannot escape it in the judgments of tribunals, alas ! too many and too high. You must sigh over it, in the altered Constitution of your country. And this brings me to another and like theme the tradi- tional and glorified image of the advocate not in his capacity of legislator and popular leader, but in his place at the bar, vindicating the rights of the citizen against the power and the malice of rulers. I touch this illusion with reluctance, for I have not forgotten the kindling of the imagination at the eloquence of Curran or of Erskine, which lights and warms the hopes and the ambition of early and generous manhood. I know how the pulse quickens, and the heart swells how the very soul rises up, with the dream and the longing, that some day or other the time may come, when we too shall have our chance of fighting that glorious fight, and fighting it to win or die. I know how even the dull brain persuades itself that great thoughts might be struck from it by the collisions c 1 O O * of such a conflict, and the torpid tongue feels as if, in such an hour, it too might be cloven and aflame. Thanks to our better nature for such dreams and such ambitious, which lift us on their wings above all that is sordid and mean ! And yet 118 COMMENCEMENT I fear that, like too many of the creatures of enthusiasm, they fade away, because they are dreams only. We are stirred, as with a trumpet, by the words of the great English advocates whom we revere, but we forget the eminent crown-counsel, our brethren likewise, whose story, good or bad, is a part of the record of our profession, and who fought for the wrong as our champions for the right. We forget Raleigh, when we remember Coke, but history has a better memory, and the strident voice of Mr. Attorney as he shouts to his victim " thou spider of hell ! " will float on its echoes in shame forever. Nor, strange as it may seem, can we expect in this country the same opportunities of distinction which arose in England in so many cases now historical. Indeed, even there they can seldom again occur, popularized as British institu- tions have become. What we are still pleased to call a repub- lican system, here, is approaching nearer, day by day, to a pure democracy. We cannot all meet in one place, as they did in the classic times, and legislate and adjudicate by simple outcry. But we are endeavoring to approach that happy condition, as nearly as our territory and population will allow, and every department of government is expected practically to represent the will of the majority, even if it be but a majority of one. What is expected in that way, we know, from experience, generally happens after a while; and it may be regarded as established doctrine, that constitutions should (or at all events will) interpose no permanent obstacle to its happening. In ordinary times, when passion is asleep and fellow-countrymen are content to make money out of each other and be fraternal and happy, the majority do not desire to oppress the minority, except perhaps in the way of business. ADDRESS. 119 There is then no room for championship, because there are no victims, and all goes " merry as a marriage bell." In such times, we roam in the Elysian fields of democracy and justly call them blessed little thinking how near we are to another and a different place in the Plutonian realm. But let strife come, and bitterness and blood, and there is no despot like a majority enthroned. A mob in its wrath is the wildest of wild beasts, and it is none the less savage, when its ferocity is formalized into law, and it rends its victims with the cold, hard hands of what it calls its justice. There is no place for the advocate then. His eloquence is a vain breath, and his courage, at best, but a noble insignificance. The divinest of divine rights is against him, and the very "Palladium" itself is a part of the enraged divinity. The voice of the people is it not the voice of God ? And is not the majority the people ? Having felt it my duty to say thus much to you of what may perhaps have been in some regards discouraging, I rejoice that Ave can still welcome you to a profession which, stripped of all false pretences and exaggerations, is worthy your best faculties, your highest qualities, your complete and earnest self-dedication and devotion. Its influences are as wide as society. Its duties are arduous, elevated, delicate and responsible. Its honors and rewards, when fairly sought and earned, may fill the measure of a great ambition. You cannot be too wise, too learned, or too virtuous for it. You can make all knowledge tributary to it, and yet not tran- scend its compass. With the common midnight oil of its lamp you may burn the most precious perfumes, and yet not waste them. On the other hand, I am bound to say that it is a calling which you can readily degrade, degrading your- 120 COMMENCEMENT selves along with it. Instead of an honorable and liberal profession, you may convert it, with fatal ease, into a sordid trade, w r hich no talent can dignify, no eminence can make other than corrupting and corrupt. You must bear in mind that although yours is a learned profession, it is an eminently practical one living and mov- ing and never standing still. Its archaeology therefore belongs to its literature, rather than its life. You have no time to waste on its quaint pedantries and scholastic riddles. Petere fontes quam sectari rivulos is a very good maxim, but it must not be too literally followed. It is well to know the heads of the streams and what is to be found there, but you cannot afford to sit angling, with Piscator and Venator, by the water- side, and meditating under the willows. You are to be men of active thought not antiquarians. You must keep your every-day faculties bright for every day use, and train them to keep pace with every day's progress. More than any other quality or condition of mind, your profession demands that enlightened practical sagacity which is known as common sense. Do not misunderstand me. Your merely practical men are useful, doubtless, and often successful, in their way. But they are, for the most part, little and contracted excel- lent and worthy drudges if they are good men almost inevit- ably pettifoggers, unless under remarkable moral restraint. When, therefore, I exalt common sense, I do not speak of the small sense of that class of people. I mean the large assimilative faculty, which digests the learning of the pro- fession into solid and useful food which extracts substantial knowledge from study, and not theories or speculations which makes the intellect capacious and healthy, cleaning it wholly ADDRESS. 121 of cobwebs and crotchets. It has been otherwise forcibly described as "rectitude of understanding." All cannot pos- sess it in its highest, or indeed in a high degree, but all should strive to cultivate it and develop it. Without it, you may go on studying more and more and knowing less and less, every day, for all useful purposes, until your minds become as crowded and confused as the last edition of a popular and much-edited text-book. But although what I have just said is universally true in our profession, it is still proper to observe, that we are apt to generalize too much in speaking of the faculties and quali- ties which it demands as if all its departments required the same gifts. This is as far as possible from being true. In this country, and notably in this State, the organization of the profession is so imperfect, and there is so little distribu- tion of its various functions, that almost every lawyer is compelled to prepare himself, well or ill, for the labors of every department. It is only in very exceptional cases, and where there is great good fortune as well as peculiar ability and adaptation, that a Maryland lawyer is able to choose his own path altogether unless indeed he selects the humblest. This is a great evil, of course, and our community, until of late, has been too small to justify us in attempting to remove it. It not only prevents that concentration of thought and pursuit which is necessary to the highest excellence, but renders burdensome, almost beyond endurance, the toil of an ordinarily successful career. In the absence of a proper professional classification, the wisest thing you cau do is to endeavor to classify yourselves to find out what you are best fitted for, and devote yourselves to it. How many of 16 122 COMMENCEMENT our brethren do we not daily see, who waste, in the struggles of the trial-table, for which they are wholly unfit, abilities which would yield them reputation, in the quiet of chambers ? How many, whose tact and cleverness would give them name and place at the bar, are digging and delving, in hopeless drudgery, perhaps self-imposed? Of course, it is not the easiest thing in the world for a man to measure his own abilities fairly, and there is nothing about which the public is more apt to differ from us than the estimate we place upon ourselves. There is some consolation, it is true, in knowing that the public judgment is not always very enlightened or discriminating. It sometimes assigns us places for which even we ourselves know that we are wholly unfit. Indeed it is often surprising to see how men will deliberately select blind guides, who lead them into the ditch, and into how many ditches some men will consent to be led. It is one of the hardest trials, for young men of real ability, to have to witness such exhibitions, yet you will have to witness them and be patient. The best use that you can make of the inevitable season of hope deferred, is to study yourselves : to find out, by honest, manly self-examination, what you are best fitted for, so that, when you see your opportunity, you may know it and seize it. I do not mean that you should yield to the temptation of subsiding into what is easiest, any more than that you should commit the folly of aspiring to what is beyond your reach. Earnest and continued effort will often develop into great effectiveness, powers of which men were hardly conscious at the beginning just as con- spicuous failure will demonstrate the delusion under which they have exaggerated their abilities. But, be assured that ADDRESS. 123 nothing worse can happen to any man, young or old, in the matter of which I speak, than to persuade himself that he is an admirable Crichton and can develop himself into anything he pleases to be. In such case, he is apt to be developed into nothing but a warning to others. After what has been told you of the scope and dignity of your profession, it will perhaps seem paradoxical in me to say, that some of the highest intellectual and moral qualities which you possess may perhaps partially disqualify you for success, and especially as advocates. Nevertheless, it is true, and to feel it is another of the most trying experiences through which young men of merit can pass. Although the scheme of our calling has been framed with great wisdom for the attain- ment of truth and justice, it is nevertheless an artificial scheme, and hence is much misunderstood. No one has described it better than Sydney Smith no one so well, to my knowledge. In his remarkable sermon, entitled " The Lawyer that Tempted Christ," he says that, " Justice is found experimentally to be most effectually promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men, presenting, to the selection of an impartial judge, the best arguments for the establishment and explana- tion of truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrangement, the decided duty of an advocate to use all the arguments in his power to defend the cause he has adopted, and leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others." Thus it will be seen that our function, as advocates, is one of per- suasion rather than of demonstration to illustrate, discuss, convince, not to ordain or to establish. We deal, forensically, with arguments concerning truth, rather than with truths. Now, although many ingenious men are undoubtedly deluded 124 COMMENCEMENT and misled by their own ingenuity, I fancy that he discusses truth best he presents the views and arguments most ably, by which others are to arrive at it who has sought after it most earnestly, and understands it best himself. While, therefore, it is undoubtedly the fact, as the wise preacher adds, that this practice of an advocate is not without danger to the individual, however useful it may be for the administration of public justice, I am sure that it is compatible with the highest sense of truth and the manliest respect for it. I am confident that the intellects and the principles which are safest from danger because of it, are those of the ablest and best and most successful advocates. Nevertheless, there are minds and characters of high order, which are not plastic enough to adapt themselves to it. There are many men whose con- sciences are no tenderer than those of their fellows, but whose minds are so constituted that they cannot reason, except in the direction of their own convictions or conclusions. There are others, whose instincts embarrass them in doing this, even when they are satisfied that it is their duty to do it. An observation recently made, in a leading English periodical, concerning the late Earl of Elgin, will fully illustrate my meaning. " He would have failed utterly as a professional advocate," the writer states, " from his inability, even for the sake of argument, to look at one side of a question only and close his eyes to the other. His intellectual and moral con- stitution rendered it impossible for him to see a truth and conceal it." This is a portrait of a wise and great character, or of an extremely impracticable one, according to circumstances. Such traits may give us a great moralist or a mere dogmatist an enlightened judge or a perpetual doubter and dissenter. ADDRESS. 125 With large and vigorous intellect great energy and wisdom, and an instinctive perception of truth and right men of that stamp may lead the thought and mould the temper of a century. With more limited faculties and a less ample nature, they are apt to stand in the world's way the victims of their own scruples and the chief disciples of their own opinions. When an ordinary man is so sure of himself as to exclude from the possible categories of truth all that does not seem true to him, his intellect is at least in no great danger of suffering from over-expansion. But, whatever be the gifts of this class of minds, they are certainly not those of the advocate. It may be a compliment to them to say this; but for us who are considering the ele- ments of professional success, it is sufficient to know that they will find their idiosyncrasies an obstacle none the less per- plexing, perhaps, from being worthy of respect. They lose sight of the fact that the questions they are discussing are often new and therefore speculative ; that the truths involved, most commonly, are purely artificial. They will accordingly hesitate or scorn, if you please to address arguments to the judgment of others, which do not convince their own. They will shrink from advancing theories which they feel or sus- pect to be fallacious. They will restrain suggestions, perhaps conclusive to others, because they would not themselves adopt them. Now, there might be some reason why counsel should be silent, when they think themselves in the wrong, if they were always in the right when they believed themselves to be so. Unhappily, this is not the case. I will not speak of juries for their ways are too much in the depths of the sea but the Courts are constantly teaching us the vanity 126 COMMENCEMENT of our conclusions overruling us, when we are most firmly persuaded of success, and then kindly refusing to share our doubts, when we are half-persuaded they are insurmountable. If, therefore, we have nothing to urge on their consideration but our own convictions, we are fighting a one-sided battle and asserting our infallibility at the cost of our clients. I have known causes lost by capable men, for no other reason than that they were too fully convinced of the conclusiveness of a favorite point, to feel the necessity of urging others equally obvious. They forgot that it was their business to convince other people and not themselves merely, and that all minds are not alike. You may perhaps make another discovery, early in your practice, quite as disheartening as the fact which we have just been considering. You may find that the tastes and the accomplishments which nature and education have given you will not always hasten nay, possibly, may retard your advancement. A young man of high culture and self-respect must shrink, in spite of him, from many of the first lessons of his experience. He will find himself expected, yet utterly unable, to welcome and embrace things which repel and dis- gust him. He will be ashamed to surrender himself to the tawdry and threadbare commonplaces and conventionalities which enter so largely into a certain department of forensic discussion. He will almost envy the dulness which is uncon- scious of its self-exposure, and the ignorance which runs on, because it does not know when it has run out. He will wonder, painfully, whether he can ever descend to the charla- tanism and the fustian which he hears applauded to the echo, if not by the judicious who grieve, yet at least by the ground- ADDRESS. 127 lings who pay. He may sit happy is he who does not remember those weary and repining days he may sit, idle and poor, while incompetence and audacity advertise them- selves and prosper, till he feels almost ready to curse, in his despair, the very excellences which were the goal and the ambition of his youth. Nor am I sure that you will always find, even among the elders of your calling, that encouragement and countenance, in this regard, which might be expected from the leaders of a liberal profession. It is not to be disguised that there is a superstition still haunting the bar of this country though in England it has nearly disappeared and on the Continent never existed that a man cannot know much law, who knows much of anything else. There are many able and successful lawyers who devoutly believe of the law, as certain Mahom- medan sectaries of the Koran, that there is nothing written outside of it which is good, and it is therefore sinful to read any thing which is not in it. You will of course rarely hear this proposition so nakedly or frankly stated ; but you will assuredly have to meet and overcome, as best you may, a quiet and perpetual, and doubtless a sincere disparagement of your professional ability, proportionate to the culture and accomplishments with which you may be able to adorn it. I trust that you will have the manliness to succumb to no such prejudices, but will take your part, as enlightened and educated gentlemen, in relegating them to the barbarism from which they are descended. It may be that Lord Bolingbroke spoke rather in excess, when he recorded his opinion, that " unless men prepare themselves for this profession by climbing what Lord Bacon calls the vantage grounds, Law is scarce worthy 128 COMMENCEMENT a place among the learned professions it degenerates into the practice of the grovelling arts of chicane." His Lordship perhaps attributed, as was his wont, too exclusive a control to merely intellectual restraints. A greater than he has told us, with a wiser and more courtly moderation, what every man among us \vho strives to know himself, must know to be the unexaggerated truth. " He was bred to the law," says Mr. Burke, in speaking of Mr. Grenville, "which is, in my opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding than all other kinds of learning put together ; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and liberalize the mind precisely in the same proportion." And it is because the study and the practice of your profession thus tend to narrow and not to liberalize the understanding, that you must keep it broad and liberal, if you can, by wider and less arti- ficial thought. You shall soon cease to know Hercules by his foot, if it be kept cramped and bandaged like a Chinese woman's. No, gentlemen ! Your profession calls upon you for no sacrifice of your best gifts and powers. There is room for all of them within it, unless pedantry has the making of its pale. There is scope in it for Fancy and her nobler sister Imagination. There is room for all literature, all science and every liberal art. There is field for Wit and for Humor, for Taste and Grace for all that is splendid in the mastery of Eloquence all that can influence the human mind and penetrate and control the human heart. History has no record of an advocate whose genius and culture were above his office ; and it is in part the fault of just such prejudice as I am combating, that we have so ADDRESS. 1 29 few in the country, to-day, who approach the level of its real greatness. There is a consolation in reflecting, that when you are called to overcome difficulties such as have been alluded to, and others like them, you arc required to do no more than your brethren have done before you. I have seen a charming French vaudeville, the whole point of which is in the contrast between two lovers, one of whom loses all his ardor as soon as he meets with an obstruction, while the other grows as cold as Plato the very moment that obstacles disappear. The devotion of the most ardent worshippers of jurisprudence is hardly passionate enough to develop such vivid contrasts in our professional drama ; but, in the main, the men who win the favors of our "jealous mistress/' are they whom difficulties only brace to resolution. Given a certain amount of good sense, force, and education, and accident apart the rest is matter of perseverance, industry and courage. It may not be to-day, nor to-morrow it perhaps may never be. We witness too many shipwrecks, to dare foretell a prosperous voyage for every gallant bark that we " see from the beach when the morning is shining." Still, we have the happiness to know, that sooner or later, and with reasonable certainty, success generally comes when it is deserved though it often- times may come when it is not. But, gentlemen, what is success in your profession ? Upon the answer which you give that question, in your hearts and minds, will depend all of the career in which this is your first step before the world. If success means to you only business, and business, according to the clever sarcasm of Dumas, means to you only " other people's money," you are 17 130 COMMENCEMENT wasting your time with professors and diplomas. You can attain the ends of such an enterprise, by shorter processes and simpler ways than any taught in universities. Do not imagine that I can so far forget my duty as to perplex you with cant and sentimentalism on an occasion like this, instead of practical and healthy counsel. I know that you are begin- ning the serious task of your lives your struggle for a place among your fellows, and for bread. I recognize pecuniary reward as not only fit to be within your professional pur- poses and just contemplation, as a right and a possession, but as a means of that personal independence which is the most "glorious privilege" of manhood. When my Lord Chief Justice Montagu said, at his installation, " I have no need to be corrupt, neither in action nor affection, for I have estate sufficient," he spoke, if in no higher spirit, at least as a man of sense and of the world, who knew and acknowledged the weakness of our nature and the supports which it needs, at the best. It is no part of my purpose, therefore, to dis- parage, in the slightest degree, the manly and reasonable pursuit of professional emolument. It is your right, as I have said, and you should insist on it, whenever it is a question of mere right, and higher considerations do not make it your pleasure or duty to resign it. You will find strange notions on the subject in the community. Gentlemen, in other walks of life, your own contemporaries, entering upon their vocations side by side with you your superiors in no regard certainly, not even in the moneyed capital with which they begin their career will measure your labors and efforts, years hence, by a scale which it would cause them great indig- nation to have applied to their own daily commercial trausac- ADDRESS. 131 tions. They will earn, in an hour, by a single effort of mercantile sagacity, or a single act of mercantile trust, what would pay you, richly, for a half year's income, and yet wonder at the exorbitance of your comparatively moderate demands, for the most devoted and successful exertion of the highest professional ability. Some men seem to think that only money ought to breed money, and cannot understand that the investment of character as high as theirs, in a calling infinitely more laborious than theirs, requiring ten-fold the learning and faculties which are needed in theirs, ought to yield at least as large return as theirs, when the harvest-sun is on the grain. They are almost like the Arab, whom Dr. Hogg, the companion of Lamartine in the East, had cured of a serious malady. As soon as the patient grew strong enough to walk, he called on his physician for a present, and was lofty and indignant when refused. " I had hoped," he said, " to find you more disposed to show your gratitude to God, for having made you wise enough to cure such dreadful dis- eases." It is astonishing how many persons think that virtue and knowledge are their own sufficient reward, when they would otherwise have to pay the reward themselves. If, then, fees come honestly and fairly in fill your skull-caps with them, if you have any, like my Lord Keeper Guilford, and temper your exultation, if need be, as he did, by reading Littleton's Tenures every Christmas. What is to be shunned and deprecated is not that. It is the surrender and subordination of your profession and your- selves to gain the abandonment of your dignity and freedom to mere money-making and the base arts which are almost inseparable from such degradation of a liberal calling. It 132 COMMENCEMENT is a common thing to say that ours is a specially money- loving age. I doubt whether this is true whether men are at all worse in that regard, to-day, than they have always been, since the root of all evil was planted. In one of the recently opened houses in Pompeii, a mosaic pavement has been found, in the centre of which, in large letters, is the motto, " Salve Lucrum." Such a profession of faith, on the part of the luxurious Roman whom the ashes of Vesuvius overwhelmed with his lucre, was only a superfluous and ostentatious piece of candor. Perhaps, like Lord Byron, he desired to be taken for something worse than he was. But he scarcely loved money any more than a robber baron or a Lombard usurer, or any less than a Wall Street financier or a lender on "approved collaterals." The curse of our times is not the mere love of acquisition, nor of money as a treasure and possession, but the self-prostration of society before it, as a dignity, a principality and a power. The Roman was content to print his text on the stones, and tread it beneath his feet in the revel. In our times, we reverence the wisdom which, in Poor Richard's Almanack, expanded it into a gospel and founded on it a religion, whose first and great commandments are multiplication and addi- tion. And it is because money is, thus, not merely the object of a common human lust among us, but of a homage as degrading as that of the Castiliau courtiers to the crowned and sceptred corpse of Pedro's leman that no friend can say God-speed to you, without a word of warning. Down in the abyss of such a worship may sink talents, learning, promise. In it may be lost, without hope, every aspiration that is noble, every principle that is pure, every quality that is ADDRESS. 133 generous and high. Against its demoralizing propagandism there can be no stronger bulwark, humanly speaking, than the resistance and example of a learned and intellectual pro- fession, powerful from its numbers and its influence; intimate and controlling in its necessary connection with every variety of human affairs ; trained to vigorous and independent thought and downright, public and effective speech. If it but dares assert its dignity and character, there is no social agent which has half its power to curb and to reform society. If it is true to itself in speech and counsel ; if it has courage and integrity enough to spurn association with fraud and wrong, in every shape, and to expose and denounce them wherever they appear, it can control whole classes of society, whom the preacher will not reach and to whom moralists are a jest. If, on the other hand, it is capable of nothing better than to sell itself to adopt every man's cause, and help or defend every man's contrivance, who pays it is a social nuisance and deserves to be despised. Better " to lie in cold obstruction and to rot," than to be part or parcel of it. I speak plainly, not because so to speak is virtuous, or seems to be, but because your profession is growing in dis- credit, and I fear deservedly, and because its regeneration must come from within and not from without. You cannot look to the public to reform professional morals, for, unfortu- nately, whatever want of principle exists in our ranks is but a supply created by the public demand. As long as we are willing to touch pitch, the community, though it sneer at us, will keep our hands defiled, to its profit at least as much as ours. I pray you then to bear in mind, even in your lightest day-dreams in the framing of every plan and the nursing 134 COMMENCEMENT of every hope that while learning and intellectual versatility and power are the thews and sinews of your calling, integ- rity of purpose and of conduct is its living soul. Its every relation, properly considered, involves confidence and implies frankness, fidelity and honor. You owe these last, not merely to the clients who trust you, but to the tribunals, the public, your brethren and, above all, yourselves. You should be as far above the charlatanry and imposture which deceive and mislead, as the coarser dishonesty which plunders or lets plunder. Nay, it is your business, not only to make honor the guide of your own conduct, but to make no terms with dishonor. The demoralization of the hour comes far less from the sins which are committed, than from the slipshod acquiescence by which honest men condone them. I know that it is the fashion to call plain speech " invidious ; " and of course any man who goes crying aloud, like Cassandra, will probably be listened to no more than she, let him speak what truth he may. But there are times when for a gentleman to be silent is to forego a duty, because it is unpleasant, and to compromise himself by unmanly toleration. He must take the consequences of the accustomed slur that he sets himself up to be better than other people. Lord Bacon did undoubt- edly himself take bribes, the while he exhorted Mr. Justice Huttou to keep his hands "clean and uucorrupt from gifts." But still there are such things, in fact, as honesty and dis- honesty, and a professional man's position is not encouraging, if he cannot say, without presumption or Pharisaism, that there are some people than whom he claims to be better. And now, gentlemen, a very few words to you as working- men. You have dedicated yourselves to a pursuit which, in ADDRESS. 135 its best estate, entails on you a life of toil. Whether or not it shall be the toil of drudgery, unrelieved and unending, depends in a measure on yourselves, and on what you shall do for yourselves in this your season of freshness and strength. Your first and most manifest necessity is to become thoroughly grounded, so far as your talents may permit, in the principles which are the true learning of the law. Simplification, the happy result of all sound analysis, should be the prime object of your labors. The more you rid your minds of non-essen- tials, the nearer you will bring them to the knowledge which avails. You are enlisted in an army where the knowledge which does not avail belongs to the impedimenta, and must be sent to the rear. You will need to be not only thoroughly informed, but ready, and this last you can never be, unless you have what you ought to know stored away within easy reach, and unless, when you reach it, you can grasp it. " Xo attorney," exclaimed Lord Tenterden, from the Bench, " is bound to know all the law. God forbid that it should be imagined that an attorney or counsel, or even a Judge, is bound to know all the law." Yet there is not a mendicancy more pitiful on earth, than that of a lawyer in active practice, who has to beg, every day, from his books, the bread of his daily need. But let me entreat you to have it ever present before you, that the great end and effort of your labors should be to learn to think. You may pile such a mountain of other men's thoughts upon your minds that, though they were Titans, they could not turn under it. Until a second Omar shall rise up, in the order of Providence, to burn your books, or the Courts shall agree, a little more generally, to prefer a reason, now and then, to a report from some " far countree," 136 COMMENCEMENT you will of course have to wander much in the labyrinth of cases. But, I charge you, wander there with cautious feet, and do not delude yourselves with the conceit that case-hunting is study or case-knowledge learning. You must keep side by side, as I have said, with the progress of the law, but a single shelf of your libraries will measure the most of that progress which is real. In the preparation of your causes, put no trust in genius or inspiration. If a man ever has a great success without working his best for it, it is rarely more than once in a life- time like marrying for love. Be careful, nevertheless, to shun over-preparation, which is a grievous impediment to thought and argument. It is painful to see how many causes, which ought to be won, are lost, by being conscientiously studied and tried to death. Next to self-possession and self-control, the working quality which will stand you most in stead, is clearness of miud and speech. Whether the stream be deep or shallow, it matters little what golden sands lie in the bed, if men cannot be made to see them. Clearness of statement can hardly be without clearness and directness of thought. This last, perhaps, is commonly a gift of nature, but there are few good minds, in which discipline and use will not breed a habit of it. It is not given, as we know, to all men, to be eloquent, or great, or very wise, but he whose mind goes straight to its own purpose and conclusions, and can light the minds of other men along its processes, as with the light of perfect day, has, as an advocate, as little reason as the best to rail at fortune. While nothing can be more unworthy of your calling than the arts of sycophancy, there can be nothing worthier of it ADDRESS. 137 than respectful courtesy to those who seek your counsel, and kindly sympathy beyond the formal line of duty to them as your clients. To be consulted as oracles and looked up to from afar, is very pleasant, undoubtedly, to men of a certain character ; but, in the end, they generally find themselves with a small congregation of worshippers, while around the more genial of their brethren there gather every year, fresh troops of friends. And, after all, what is human life, at its proudest, without human sympathies ? On your personal intercourse with your brethren must to a great extent depend the degree of satisfaction which will attend your labors, whatever be their course or your success. The antagonisms and the inevitable partisanship of the pro- fession render it necessary for you to be ever on your guard, lest you trench upon the rights and feelings of your fellows. There can be no severer test, of both temper and manners, than the trial-table, and few are so happily endowed as to be superior always to its provocations and temptations. That the best of us profit, as we should, by its lessons of forbear- ance and self-restraint, it would be rash indeed to say ; but when you shall have felt, as few escape, the mortifica- tion which is inseparable from the consciousness of having neglected them, you will understand how impossible it is for you to heed them too much. To the Courts before which you appear your first duty is deference and respect. There can be no two things more different than discourtesy and proper independence, in your dealings with them. A right-minded and right-hearted judge is always at a disad- vantage in a collision with counsel. The very superiority of his position makes it doubly his duty and inclination to 18 138 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. forbear, and he hesitates to strike, lest the judge should be moved by the resentment of the man. I need not say how ungenerous it is to forget this and so forget yourselves. If you would have, with the Bench and with the Bar, the legitimate influence which is one of the most attractive of professional rewards, you must give as well as take. You must yield respect if you would receive respect. You must be courteous, considerate and liberal, if you would have courtesy, liberality and consideration. Above all, you must deserve confidence if you would enjoy it ; and, believe me, no weight of intellect, no copiousness of learning, will com- mend you or your cause one-half so strongly as a life of stain- less rectitude, of kindly offices, of manly frankness and of lofty purpose. ADDRESS AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY, Delivered in the Senate Chamber, at Annapolis, DECEMBER 10TH, 1872. ROGER BROOKE TANEY. REPORT AND ADDRESS OF THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE. YOUR EXCELLENCY : BY an Act of the General Assembly of Maryland passed at the Session of 1867, the sum of five thousand dollars was appropriated for "the building or erecting a suitable monument over the remains of the late Chief Justice ROGER B. TANEY, on some suitable site in the State House yard, or in the State House itself," and Messrs. G. Frederick Maddox, of St. Mary's county, Chas. E. Trail and Hugh McAleer, of Frederick county, James T. Eaiie, of Queen Anne's county, Henry Williams, of Calvert county, and George M. Gill and S. T. "Wall is, of Baltimore city, were appointed a committee to carry into effect the provisions of the statute. Upon the organization of the committee, it was found to be their unanimous desire that the execution of the proposed work should be entrusted to the distin- guished sculptor, Mr. William H. Rinehart, a native and citizen of Maryland, for many years a resident of Rome. The amount appropriated being wholly insufficient, not only 141 142 ROGER BROOKE TANEY. to compensate the labors of so eminent an artist, but even to meet the necessary cost of a monument at all worthy of the State and the occasion, the committee entertained serious doubts of their ability to discharge their duties satisfactorily, without further legislative provision. From this embarrass- ment they were happily relieved by the liberality and public spirit of the artist himself, who responded to their invitation by a prompt and unconditional acceptance of the commission. It is gratifying to the committee to make official acknowledg- ment of their obligations to Mr. Rinehart, for the cheerful readiness with which he not only undertook the work, but volunteered to be content with the honor of the commission as it stood, and the pride and pleasure of uniting with his fellow-citizens in their tribute to the illustrious dead. The committee, of course, did not feel that it became them so far to tax the generosity of any individual citizen, and particu- larly one to whom the State already owed so much, for the reflected honor of his well-earned reputation. They, never- theless, requested Mr. Rinehart to prepare them such design as seemed to him appropriate, and the model of the present statue was accordingly sent forward, while the General Assem- bly of 1870 was in session. The engagement of Mr. Rinehart and the plan of his work were so acceptable to the members of both Houses, that an additional appropriation of ten thousand dollars was at once made for the completion of the monument, according to his design, and under the direction of the original committee. It would be ungracious not to recognize the liberal and most becoming spirit in which this legislative action was taken, and its perfect accord with the deep and spontaneous feeling which had welcomed the first appropriation. ROGER BROOKE TANEY. 143 The Legislature of 1867, as appears by the Act of that date, had contemplated the removal of the remains of Chief Justice Taney to the Capital of the State, and the erection of the monument above them. The suggestion, in itself, was eminently appropriate, for many reasons. It was here that, as a student, he had laid the deep and broad foundations of his professional learning and success. In the chamber where we meet to-day, to do him honor and to whose historical associations this scene will add another, not the least he sat, for years, a Senator of Maryland, the peer of the dis- tinguished men who sat around him, when no legislative body in the Union surpassed that Senate in dignity, ability, or moral elevation. In the Chamber there, above us, where the honorable Judges, who join us in this tribute to his memory, uphold the ancient credit of the State's Appellate Bench, at the zenith of his reputation as advocate and counsel and in the very ripeness of his powers, he shone, the leader of the bar of Maryland, its actual not less than its official head. And those were days too, when to lead it was to walk in the footsteps of Pinkney and be measured by the measure of his genius. If, therefore, he had slept beneath this dome, or in its shadow, it would have been with the dwelling-places of his fame about him, surrounded by the olden and consecrated memories of the State, which was but a revolted colony when he was born. But the wishes of the Chief Justice himself, upon that subject, had been too strong and were too sacred, to be vio- lated by his children, even for the gratification of the public desire. The quiet town of Frederick, the theatre of his earlier professional distinction, was hallowed to him by the 144 EOGER BROOKE TANEY. grave of his mother ; and when he left it, in mid life, for larger spheres of usefulness and honor, he exacted the pledge, from those who loved him, that he should be laid beside her when he died. Nor was this the outbreak of fresh grief or transient sentiment or feeling. Through all his life of toil and struggle, ambition, reward and disappointment, it was his dearest longing ; and there is something inexpressibly touching in the warmer and more anxious hope with which the world-worn man clung fast to it, as the period drew nearer for its consummation. The literature of the English tongue has nothing that exceeds in mournful tenderness and grace the expression which he gave to it, in a letter written but a little while before the pledge of friendship was redeemed. Such a feeling so devoted, and cherished for so long it would have been next to sacrilege to disregard ; and the Legislature of 1870 respected it accordingly by withdraw- ing from the appropriation of their predecessors and their own all but the one condition, which required the monument to be erected where it stands. The final selection of that locality, with its exposure, rendered it expedient that the statue should be cast in bronze, and the Legislature, there- fore, so directed. With the erection of the monument, the prescribed duties of the committee which I have the honor to represent were substantially ended, but in view of the time which must elapse before another session of the General Assembly, they have deemed it due to the dignity of the occasion respect- fully to invite the official intervention of your Excellency, in delivering the finished work to the people of the State. It would have been a pleasure to them, if they could have ROGER BROOKE TANEY. 145 felt at liberty to anticipate the wishes of the Legislature, or have ventured to ask that your Excellency would gratify your own, by authorizing a more formal celebration than this quiet homestead gathering. As a few moments will disclose to us, the artist has chosen to present us his illustrious subject in his robes of office, as we saw him when he sat in judgment. The stature is heroic, but, with that exception, the traits of nature are not altered or disguised. The weight of years that bent the venerable form has not been lightened, and the lines of care, and suffering, and thought, are as life traced them. But, unless the master's hand has lost its cunning, we shall see not merely the lineaments we knew, but traces of the soul which illuminated and informed them. The figure has been treated by the artist in the spirit of that noble and absolute simplicity which is the type of the highest order of greatness, and is therefore its grandest, though its most difficult expression, in art. The sculptor deals easily enough with subjects which admit of ornament and illustration, or address the passions or the fancy. The graces he can lend his work the smiles with which it wins us the beautiful or joyous images or thoughts with which he can surround it each is to us an open leaf of the fair poem which he writes in bronze or marble. Like the chorus of a drama, they tell, even for the worst of poets, far more than half his story. Another task indeed it is, to embody in a single image the expression of a great historic life, so that standing severe and apart, it shall be its own interpreter, forever, to the generations of men. The pathway of a great judge does not lead through the realms of fancy. Neither in reality nor in retrospect is there 19 146 ROGER BROOKE TANEY. much of the flush of imagination upon it or about it. \Yittr such a career Art cannot deal, nor History, as with those brilliant lives, which dazzle while they last and are seen only through a halo when they are over. The warrior, the orator, the poet each in his way is linked with the imagi- nation or enthusiasm of mankind ; and so the broken sword, the unstrung lyre, the shattered column with its cypress wreaths, all have their voices for the common heart. But the atmosphere of pure intellect and dispassionate virtue, serene although it be, is far too cold for ordinary sympathies to live in. The high ministers of human justice are segre- gated from their fellows, by their very function, which shuts out favor and affection. Fidelity to the obligation which withdraws them from the daily interests and passions and almost from the converse of society, is the patent of their nobility in their great office. The loftier the nature, the more complete its isolation, to the general eye the fewer the throbs which answer to its pulses. Such men may be cherished and beloved, in the personal and near relations which are the dearest blessing of all lives. They may be venerated and revered, so that all heads shall be bowed and uncovered when they pass. But they go, when life closes, into the chamber of heroes fated to dwell afar off, only in the memories and minds of men. When the great citizen whose image is beside us walked, in his daily walk, amid our reverence, the simple beauty of his private life was all before us. We can recall his kindly smile, his open hand, his gracious, gentle speech. The elders of our generation will remember how his stormy nature was subdued, by duty and religion, to the temperance, humility ROGER BROOKE TANEY. 147 and patience which we knew. All of us saw and wondered how domestic sorrows, the toils and trials of his station, old age, infirmity of body, ingratitude, injustice, persecution, still left his intellect unclouded, his courage unsubdued, his forti- tude unshaken, his calm and lofty resignation and endurance descending to no murmur nor resentment. These things the sculptor is not called to tell to those who shall come after us. The pen of the biographer has worthily recorded them, and just posterity will read what he has written. The image of the Magistrate and Ruler, as the world was wont to see him, is all that the chisel bequeaths to immortality his image, as History shall see it, when, ashamed of the passions of our day, she shall be once more reconciled with Truth. With this noblest of the tasks of Art, only genius may deal fitly yet genius has dealt with it, and its difficulties, overcome, are the glory and the triumph of genius. Thus, then, to-day, sir, the State of Maryland, with grate- ful reverence and pride, commemorates a life, than which few greater, and none loftier or purer, shall dignify the annals of our country. It was a life coeval with her own, and a part of her own, and she honors what she knew. It was a life of patriotism, of duty, and of sacrifice ; a life whose aim and effort, altogether, were to be, and do, and bear, and not to seem. The monument her people rear to it is scarcely less her monument than his to whom it rises. What changes shall roll round it with the rolling seasons ; whether it shall survive the free institutions of which Taney was the wor- shipper and champion, or shall see them grow in stability, security and splendor ; whether it shall witness the develop- ment and beneficent expansion of the constitutional system 148 ROGER BROOKE TANEY. which it was the labor of his life and love to understand and to administer, or shall behold it, "Like a circle in the water, Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught" are questions which men will answer to themselves, accord- ing to their hopes or fears according to their trust, it may be, in the Mercy and Providence of God. But Maryland has done her part for good, in this at least, that she has made imperishable record, for posterity, of the great exam- ple of her son. She has builded as it were a shrine to those high civic qualities and public virtues, without which, in their rulers, republics are a sham, and freedom cannot long abide among a people. It was, I was about to say, the sad mischance but, in a higher though more painful sense, the privilege and fortune of Chief Justice Taney, to fill his place in times of revolution and unparalleled convulsion when blood boiled in the veins of brethren, till it was red upon a million hands. In such a crisis, no man so conspicuous as he, and yet so bound to shun the rancor of the strife, could hope for freedom from distrust and challenge. A soul, brave and tenacious as his was so sensitive to duty, and so resolute to do it provoked injustice not to be appeased, and dared reproaches which he might not answer. His constitutional opinions were already part of the recorded jurisprudence of the country, and he could not change them because the tempest was howling. It was the convic- tion of his life that the Government under which we lived was of limited powers, and that its Constitution had been ROGER BROOKE TANEY. 149 framed for war as well as peace. Though he died, there- fore, he could not surrender that conviction at the call of the trumpet. He had plighted his troth to the Liberty of the Citizen and the Supremacy of the Laws, and no man could put them asunder. Whatever might be the right of the people to change their Government, or overthrow it, he believed that the duty of the judges was simply to maintain the Constitution, while it lasted, and, if need were, defend it to the death. He knew himself its minister and servant only not its master commissioned to obey and not to alter. He stood, therefore, in the very rush of the torrent, and, as he was immovable, it swept over him. He had lived a life so stainless, that to question his integrity was enough to beg- gar the resources of falsehood and make even shamelessness ashamed. He had given lustre and authority, by his wisdom and learning, to the judgments of the Supreme Tribunal, and had presided over its deliberations with a dignity, impartiality and courtesy which elevated even the administration of jus- tice. Every year of his labors had increased the respect and affection of his brethren and heightened the confidence and admiration of the profession which looked up to him as worthily its chief. And yet he died, traduced and ostra- cised, and his image was withheld from its place in the chamber which was filled already with his fame. Against all this, the State of Maryland here registers her protest in the living bronze. She records it in no spirit of resentment or even of contention, but silently and proudly as her illustrious son, without a word, committed his reputa- tion to the justice of his countrymen. Nor doubts she of the answer that posterity will make to her appeal. Already the 150 ROGER BROOKE TANEY. grateful manhood of the people has begun to vindicate itself and him. Already, among those whose passion did him wrong, the voices of the most eminent and worthy have been lifted, in confession of their own injustice and in manly homage to his greatness and his virtues. Already the waters of the torrent have nearly spent their force, and high above them, as they fall, unstained by their pollu- tion and unshaken by their rage, stands where it stood, in grand and reverend simplicity, the august figure of the great Chief Justice ! ADDRESS ON BEHALF OF THE LEE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION, DELIVERED AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, BALTIMORE, APRIL 10TH, 1875. ROBERT E. LEE. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : THE ladies, at whose invitation you are here this even- ing, have honored me by their command to state the scope and purpose of the work in which they solicit you to join them. But for the deference to which their wishes and opinions are entitled, I should have ventured to believe the task a needless one, for I am sure the feelings which induce your presence have already spoken to you with a deep impressiveuess, to which I can add neither pathos nor power. There are names which in themselves are a history and a consecration themes which are their own eloquent interpreters beyond speech or writing and who is there that can add a word or a thought to the story, when, to those who are around me, I name the name and call up the memory of LEE? More than four years have gone, since the great citizen and soldier was called to his reward. He would, himself, have coveted no prouder resting-place than the green bosom of his mother State no monument beyond the love and the remembrance of the people he had loved and served. But 20 153 154 ROBERT E. LEE. the gratitude and devotion of the living refused to be meas- ured by the humility of the dead ; and it was at once deter- mined, by his followers in arms, to mark the grave of their illustrious leader by some fitting and permanent memorial. An eminent sculptor of Richmond, Mr. Edward V. Valen- tine, well known, by reputation, through the country, was accordingly invited to assist in carrying out their wishes. The choice was, in all respects, appropriate, the artist being not only of unquestionable genius, skill and cultivation, but full of enthusiasm in his art, and with that high sense of its nobility and dignity, without which none can pass beyond the outer places of its temple. These qualities existing in the sculptor, it was doubly meet he should be chosen, so that the tomb of the great Virginian should be modelled by the reverent and loving hand of a son of the same mother. Mr. Valentine's design of a recumbent figure of the hero, was accepted by the Memorial Association in the early summer of 1871, but the model was not finished in plaster until late in the ensuing winter. The statue itself, which is of marble, and of rather more than the size of life, received the last touches of the chisel but a few days since, and was exhibited to the public in Richmond, where it created the profoundest sensation. It appears to have commanded the admiration not only of the many, with whom devotion might naturally have stood in the place of criticism, but of those as well whose taste and culture entitle them to render authoritative judgment. The task of the sculptor was a difficult and grave one, but he has shown himself equal to it. His conception and its execution are severely simple. The hero is lying in his ROBERT E. LEE. 155 uniform, as if in sleep, upon his narrow soldier's bed. His posture is natural and easy. One hand is on his bosom, and touches, unconsciously and gently, "the drapery of his couch." The other is lying by his side, where it has fallen, and rests upon his sword. The portraiture is perfect, as to form no less than feature. The whole expression is that of tranquil and absolute repose. But it is not the sleep of death and nothingness, when the soul is gone, nor yet of bodily exhaustion, with its "dumb forgetfulness." It is the repose of physical power, unshaken though dormant of manly grace, most graceful when at rest of noble facul- ties, alive and sovereign, though still. It is a presence in which men stand, uncovered and in silence half listening for the voice He "is not dead, but sleepeth." The remains of General Lee were deposited and are now resting beneath the chapel of Washington and Lee Univer- sity, at Lexington, Virginia, in a chamber designed by him for a library. The place is altogether unsuited for the monu- ment proposed, which is to consist not only of the figure I have attempted to describe, but of an appropriate sarcopha- gus, in marble, on which the statue is to rest. There is neither light enough nor sufficient elevation in the apart- ment, which, in its style and appointments besides, is alto- gether out of keeping with the work of the artist, and unworthy to receive it. It has therefore been determined to erect a separate and suitable memorial building or mausoleum, upon ground which the University has placed at the disposal of the Association, not far from the spot where the great life it will commemorate was ended. In this good work it is, that you are asked to share. 156 ROBERT E. LEE. Apart from the wishes of the family of General Lee, who desire that his remains shall lie in the peaceful and scholastic shades to which he retired from the gratitude and admira- tion of his people, there is eminent propriety in this selection of his final resting-place. Had he died upon the field of fame and battle, amid " the thunder of the captains and the shouting" had he gone home, victor in some crowning and decisive fight, as he was victor in so many that were so very glorious it might have been well to lay him where men come and go a leader of men among men, still ruling their spirits from his urn. But such was not his death or fortune. The calm, self-sacrificing, upright, unrepining gentleman "Who wore no less a loving face, because so broken-hearted" humble before God and without enmity to men ; bending the faculties that might have swayed a realm, to schemes of quiet usefulness and unpraised toil ; silent before slander and insult; unmoved by threat and falsehood ; teaching, by noble precept and example, the duty of submission, as he had nobly taught and led resistance and defiance, while resistance was a duty this was the hero who died at Lexington, giving the lesson of a greatness that was far above his glory. On the field of that greatness he laid down his life, and on it he should rest. To his fame it is nothing where he sleeps. To the State that bore him having borne him it matters almost as little. Could she have buried him at Arlington, as was her right and his, she would have blended the memories of Washington and Lee with the sacred associations of their homes. At Lexington, their names at least are joined together, and there the pilgrims from Mount Vernon to ROBERT E. LEE. 157 the shrine your hands will help to build, may lay their offerings on the grave of Jackson also. WASHINGTON, LEE, JACKSON ! "dust, which is Even in itself, an immortality ! " There are before me, doubtless, some, who pay their will- ing tribute to the great Confederate soldier, yet sympathize in nothing with the cause to which he gave his heart and genius. They see, in his career and character, those traits which true men love and honor, no matter in what cause dis- played, They share the admiration which his name awakens, in the wise and brave and good, the wide world over. Their pride grows warm and high, when they remember that they are his brethren that his fame will be the treasure of their country and the heritage of their own children, so long as they shall live in a free land and share its glories. It is in the inspiration of this reverence for what is pure and noble the perpetual suggestion of this brotherhood and common pride, the obliteration of animosities, the bringing of men's hearts together, upon lofty common ground that the memory of the illustrious dead is a beneficent and living power. Its influence, first felt by the bravest and the best of those who were his foes, when swords were crossed, is now confined no longer to party or to section. It has awakened magnanimity and softened resentment almost everywhere. It has helped to break the spell of prejudice and passion, and make men feel how narrow, false and very mean a thing it is, to call opinion crime. I look upon this influence as of the happiest 158 EGBERT E. LEE. augury. I trust, nay, I believe the time is not far off, when the great struggle, which ended at Appomatox, will be regarded by the people of all America in the light of what it was, and not of what violence and falsehood, in high places and in low places, have found it their interest to call it. I look for the returning sense of self-respect as well as justice, in the country, to blot out from its laws and its judicial decisions, not long hereafter, the opprobrious epithets by which it is still the fashion to disgrace them, when the Confederate war is mentioned. I persuade myself it will not be long, before all intelligent and honorable men without abating one jot or tittle of their own convictions, or of their honest pride in having fought victoriously to maintain them will begin to feel that the wearisome and insulting cant about " rebels " and the " rebellion," and " treason " and " traitors," is altogether unworthy of them, and should be relegated to the pot-houses and their dema- gogues. I know that such already is the feeling in hosts of bosoms scarred in honorable fight, and it is a feeling that must grow and spread, because it is just and manly, and because manhood and justice are inherent in the race from which we chiefly spring, and, though they may be reached but slowly, sometimes, are certain to be reached at last. Let me not be misunderstood. Of course no Southern man has right or reason to complain of those who thought that wrong, which he thought right. Believing that a separate government was his plain right, when he might choose to have it, he may not quarrel with the opposite convictions of his countrymen, who thought, and with sincerity as deep as his, that the Union was a priceless right of theirs, and were ROBERT E. LEE. 159 therefore ready to immolate him for it, as well as sacrifice themselves. But he has the right to ask that the honesty of his convictions, the sincerity of his patriotism, the good faith of his sacrifices, shall not be doubted or denied, any more than theirs. He is entitled to demand that no enemy shall put a tongue into his wounds " poor, poor dumb mouths," and make them lie. It was melancholy beyond words, that political differences between brethren the citizens of a repub- lic whose government rested on consent could not be settled without blood. But they were political differences neverthe- less, and they were nothing more. They were the expression of political principles, concerning which parties and sections had been long divided, and which separated the best and wisest of the land, long before their antagonism was startled into strife. One side may have been right and the other wrong, or there may have been right and wrong with both but neither could question, with truth, the sincerity of the other; and only fanaticism and folly, upon either side can deny it to the other, now. I speak of the true men, upon both sides, for they only are worth considering, on either. There is something marvellous, if not inconceivable, in the belief which some people, otherwise sane, profess to enter- tain, that a man is, mentally or morally, better or worse for his sincere political opinions better or worse because he is a monarchist instead of a republican because he favors State rights or thinks them sinful ; that it was profligacy to believe secession constitutional or in any way defensible, and virtuous to believe the contrary ; that to be " loyal " was to pass into the communion of saints, and to be " disloyal " was to forfeit, in the act, the prestige of the loftiest and purest 160 EGBERT E. LEE. life. While blood was hot and flowing, such madness might have passed for reason. War over ten years gone it is but drivelling folly, without the dignity of madness. And yet to-day, this " clotted nonsense " (as Dr. Johnson would have called it, in any body but himself) is standing or is thrust in the way of justice, among thousands of honest and good people ; and, standing in the way of justice, is in the way also of that perfect reconciliation and mutual trust, which will never come, until justice shall be frankly done by the victors to the vanquished. The men who fought in the same cause with Lee, and all whose hearts were with them, are bound in honor to abide by the arbitrament they sought. They are bound to accept defeat and its legitimate consequences, in as good faith as they would have accepted victory. They are bound to obey the laws and support the constitution ; to fulfil, to the letter, every duty of citizenship, and answer freely every call of patriotic obligation. But they are not bound to defile the ashes of their dead, or to submit, in silence, to injustice or dishonor. They may have been wrong. That is fair matter of opinion, and posterity will judge them. They may have been unwise. There is no absolute criterion, on earth, of what is wise ; and none of us have reason to think, like the friends of holy Job, that we are the people, and that wisdom shall die with us. But the men of the South are entitled to stand before mankind as a people, who, believing they were right and acting with what wisdom they knew, set hope and existence on the die. They have a right to resent and denounce imputations on their purposes and motives. When they read in political journals and discourses, or hear, from the halls of legislation ROBERT E. LEE. 161 or the bench of justice, that for eight millions of free-born men to separate themselves from a popular government, of which they formed a part, and set up and be governed by another which they preferred, was " wicked rebellion " an effort to overthrow society and turn back the current of civilization they have a right to say that the time has come, when educated people should be ashamed of such things. They are the froth of the angry waters and should have passed away with the storm. Until they cease to sully the stream, the serenity of peace and brotherhood can never be reflected, like heaven, from its bosom. Such devices and phrases are not new. They are as old as foolishness and foul language. I have before me a copy which Mr. Parton has furnished, from a Tory " Extra " of 1777, chronicling the retreat of Washington across the Har- lem River, and denouncing the cause in which he was enlisted as "the most wicked, daring and unnatural rebellion that ever disgraced the annals of history." The ingenuity and eloquence of our own day, with all the modern improve- ments, have not been able, I believe, to add a single epithet to this pleasing expression of by-gone loyalty. And yet, ten years after it was written, or at all events after the Revolution was over, I am sure that all reasonable tories, and certainly all sensible Englishmen, would have agreed to laugh at it and forget it. We are ourselves about to demonstrate, by a Centennial commemoration, how entirely nature has recovered from the shock which that " rebellion " was supposed to have given her. True, it was successful, and that unquestionably makes some difference but only with time-servers. We are dealing, now, with moralists, 21 162 EGBERT E. LEE. and they will never, I suppose, suggest that wickedness ceases to be wicked, because the horn of the ungodly happens to be exalted. If Grant had surrendered to Lee, they would still have died in the conviction, that secession was a heresy ; that the ways of Providence were inscrutable, if not unconstitutional (according to Story's Commentaries) ; and that truth and reason are not questions of numbers, artil- lery or ammunition. I make these observations here, in no spirit of unkindness or contention. You would resent, and with justice, the intru- sion of past or present controversial issues, upon an occasion dedicated only to reverent and gentle memories of the dead. But I feel, in common with all to whom those memories are dear, that silence concerning such things as I have mentioned is no longer consistent with proper self-respect. So long as the bitterness of party can be profitably stirred by the worn- out catch-words of the war, we must of course expect to hear them from the lips of those to whom profit is a compensation for shame. But we have a right to appeal from these to the men who lead opinion, because they are worthy and entitled to lead it. We have a right to throw upon them the responsibility which belongs to their influence, their intelligence, nay, their breeding and their manners. And for saying this, respectfully but earnestly and frankly, I know no better occasion than the present, when we are honoring one, who, though a " rebel " of " rebels," if there were any such, was, by common consent, the soul of honor, and than whom no man living dares to say that lie or his are purer or better. And, when I remember how his gener- ous and unselfish nature would have scorned to place upon a ROBERT E. LEE. 163 lower level than his own, the purposes and motives of the humblest of the soldiers who gave all to the same cause and the same country living or dying, in defeat or victory, half-naked in the field, half-famished on the march and in the camp, but heroes always I feel as if I did his bidding, in this earnest protest against further maligning their good name. And here I am permitted, by the kindness of a friend, to read some extracts from a letter of the illustrious soldier, which has never seen the light before, and which will show through what sad struggles, of both heart and mind, he passed to what he felt to be his duty. I doubt not nay, I know that many a gallant gentleman who fought beside him, and many another in the opposing host, grieved, with as deep a grief as Lee, to draw his sword. The letter that I speak of bears the date of January 16th, 1861, and was written from Fort Mason, near San Antonio, in Texas. It was addressed to a young lady, a relative of his, for whom he had great affection, and the passages of which I speak were written as a message to her father. Alluding to the homes of two fami- lies of friends, he said : " I think of the occupants of both, very often, and hope, some day, to see them again. I may have the opportunity soon ; for, if the Union is dissolved, I shall return to Vir- ginia to share the fortune of my people. But before so great a calamity befalls the country, I hope all honorable means of maintaining the Constitution and the equal rights of the peo- ple will be first exhausted. Tell your father he must not allow Maryland to be tacked on to South Carolina, before the just demands of the South have been fairly presented to 164 EGBERT E. LEE. the North and rejected. Then, if the rights guarantied by the Constitution are denied us, and the citizens of one portion of the country are granted privileges not extended to the other, we can, with a clear conscience, separate. I am for maintaining all our rights, not for abandoning all for the sake of one. Our national rights, liberty at home and security abroad, our lands, navy, forts, dockyards, arsenals and institutions of every kind. It will result in war I know, fierce, bloody war. But so will secession, for it is revolution and war at last, and cannot be otherwise, and we might as well look at it in its true character. There is a long message, A , for your father, and a grave one, which I had not intended to put in my letter to you, but it is a subject on which my serious thoughts often turn, for, as an American citizen, I prize my government and country highly, and there is no sacrifice I am not willing to make for their preservation, save that of honor. I trust there is wisdom and patriotism enough in the country to save them, for I cannot anticipate so great a calamity to the nation as the dissolution of the Union." Alas ! alas ! that the hand which wrote those touching, anxious words, was not near enough to the helm to avert the shipwreck ! Alas ! alas ! that no voice should have been lifted in the land, potent enough to bid the whirlwind stay ! Who lacked the wisdom who lacked the patriotism which Lee invoked, it is not for me, in this place at least, to say. If they existed, they were dumb and helpless, and the whirl- wind came. But I have read enough to you, to show the stuff of which some men were made whom they call " rebels " enough to show that they who fought, at last, against the ROBERT E. LEE. 165 Union, were not always they who loved it least, or would, least willingly, have died to save it. I have spoken, Ladies and Gentlemen, of our hero's char- acter and life, as they attract the admiration of mankind of the qualities which enemies and friends may venerate alike. It would be unmanly affectation in me to pretend that, here in Maryland, we loved him and remember him chiefly for these. We are proud of the great name as proud as any but the household word is dearer far to us. His story and his memory are linked with all the hopes and triumphs, the exultation and despair, which made a century of those four bitter, bloody, torturing years. He was to us the incarna- tion of his Cause of what was noblest in it, and knightliest, and best. Whatever of perplexity beset his path before he chose it, he knew no doubts, when it was chosen. He fol- lowed where it led him, knowing no step backward. Along it, through victory and defeat, our sympathies and prayers went with him. Around him gathered the fresh, valiant manhood of our State, and many a brave young heart that ceased to beat beside him, drew him but closer to the bleed- ing hearts in all our saddened homes. These are the ties that bind him to us. These are the memories that troop around us here, to-night not of the far-oif hero, belonging to the world and history but memories of our hero ours the man that wore the Gray ! Not in the valley where he sleeps, not among the fields he made immortal, lives he, or will he live, in fonder recollections, than where Calvert planted freedom. " And far and near, through vale and hill, Are faces that attest the same; 166 ROBERT E. LEE. The proud heart flashing through the eyes, At sound of his loved name." And when they tell us, as they do, those wiser, better brethren of ours and tell the world, to make it history that this, our Southern civilization, is half barbarism, we may be pardoned if we answer : Behold its product and its representative ! " Of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble-bush gather they grapes." Here is Robert Lee show us his fellow ! ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SCHOOLS OF ART AND DESIGN OF THE MARYLAND INSTITUTE, JUNE 4, 1881. ART IN EDUCATION. MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : ON the 13th day of March, 1851, at the request of the Board of Managers of the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, I had the honor to deliver the address at the laying of the corner-stone of the edifice in which we are now assembled. It was an occasion of great public interest, particularly manifested by the class under whose auspices and for whose especial benefit the Insti- tute was organized. There comes to me a refreshing odor as of far-off incense, when I read, from the newspaper reports of the day following, that the speaker was " repeatedly inter- rupted," during the delivery of his discourse, " by the applause of his ten thousand listeners." The historical accuracy and value of this part of the record may perhaps be slightly qualified, in the opinion of some, by the statement which immediately follows, that the " ten thousand " in question " seemed to regret the close of the eloquent remarks " which they are said to have applauded. Candor, indeed, compels me to admit, for the benefit of rising orators, that such regrets on the part of audiences have not been universal, in the some- what extended experience of the speaker ; and, if the reporters 22 169 170 ART IN EDUCATION. of that day were accurate, as I am bound to believe, in their finding on the facts, it is only additional and striking evi- dence of the public sympathy which attended the enterprise then starting into life. There was, in truth, much enthusi- asm among us all, at the time, and there were high and confident hopes shared fully by the speaker with his hearers that the institution, for which they were building a dwell- ing place, would be prominent among the beneficent and civilizing agencies by which our community was to be elevated and developed. Of the conspicuous and valuable citizens, who were the early friends and promoters of the Institute and who manifested their interest in it by their presence on the occasion, there are but few now left. The able and energetic president of that day the venerable Joshua Vansant is happily still among us, his capacity for usefulness unimpaired by the labors of a long life of responsibility and duty, most honorably met and faithfully discharged. My friend and professional brother, Mr. John H. B. Latrobe, whose varied and remarkable accomplishments and gifts seem to grow brighter, from their constant and earnest application to all purposes of practical utility, is still as active and assidu- ous in the unpaid service of our people, as when he delivered the address before the Institute, in 1848, at the opening of its first annual exhibition at Washington Hall. But, when I look over the list of the then officers and members of the Institute, and see how little there remains of what constituted its vitality and gave it its impulse in those days, I vividly realize what, indeed, the flight of thirty years sufficieutly suggests that it is now face to face with the ideas and demands, of not only a new generation, but a new and ART IN EDUCATION. 171 different community. It provokes a smile to remember with what innocent self-complacency we dwelt, in 1851, upon the contrast between the wonderful Baltimore of that day, and the Baltimore which had surrounded the place where our corner-stone was laid, when it was simply a marsh, in the memory of men then living. Nor were we a whit less confident of the importance which was before us, as a city, than proud of our superiority to the past. We had great ideas of our prospects, and expressed them, after the local and not altogether disused fashion, without much diffidence. I am afraid that then, as now, we "dis- counted" our greatness a little as the phrase is going into debt to the future and to hope, without being as careful as we might, to provide a sinking fund for the redemption of our promises. Of course we have done wonders, since then, as a city, but not half as many as we might have done, with greater enterprise and more concentrated and united effort. In spite of the surprising disclosures of our sesqui-centeunial celebration, our needs are yet many, and our efforts must be great, if we would increase, or even maintain, the rate of our progress. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that we have provided, in one way or another, and with more or less com- pleteness, for several of the necessities which cried aloud for help when the Mechanics' Institute was founded. Our admirable public school system now offers, with open hands, to the mechanical classes, as to all others, the best advantages of liberal, thorough and cheap education, with no narrow limits. The bounty of the late Mr. Peabody has given to our people, at the Institute which bears his name, one of the noblest and amplest libraries of reference which 172 _ ART JJV EDUCATION. can be found within the Union. A large and beautiful col- lection of the best models of ancient sculpture is already on exhibition in the halls at that Institute, and its department of art, long dormant from deficiency of revenue, will soon be in condition, it is hoped, to offer some opportunities to stu- dents which the city has not hitherto afforded. Under the endowment of the late Mr. Hopkins, a university has sprung up recently among us, which is already marching to the front among the great schools of the world. Quite apart from its importance to the country and society at large, as an active and productive agent in the increase and diffusion of human knowledge, it has to us, as a community, a special and double value, in the stimulus which its presence and influence have given and must give to the intellectual tastes and habits of our people. Of course, there will not be music everywhere, simply because the God Pan is in the reeds. The mere pres- ence of a great institution of learning cannot make a com- munity learned or wise though some excellent people appear to think, or at all events to hope so, and seem disposed to sit still, in their ascension-robes, and wait for the change. And yet it cannot be but that an association of men of the highest order of learning and ability, conscientiously and actively devoted to the search after truth and knowledge, in every department of human thought and inquiry, must perpetually radiate something of the light and heat of their own spirit and example into the intellectual atmosphere about them. There is scarcely a man of intellectual turn among us who has not felt this from the university, already, and welcomed it with all his heart. I do not think it over-sanguine to anticipate a time, not far removed, when this indirect influ- ART IN EDUCATION. 173 ence of the Hopkins foundation apart, as lias been said, from its direct impression as a teacher will he traced, among all classes of our citizens, in a higher and more general appreciation of intellectual culture, and in habits of more accurate and studious thought. When men are habit- ually measured by a higher standard, they will come, in time, to measure themselves by it ; and self-love will at last suggest that reform which, intellectually at least (however doctors may differ about it in politics), is always best and surest, when it is spontaneous " within the party." With its large resources and bountiful equipment, the University has thus provided for a want which the founders of the Institute, in their most sanguine moments, could never have hoped to meet, except in the most limited and special way. It has provided further, by its courses of free lectures, for a demand which the Institute at first endeavored to supply, but to which its restricted means soon proved unequal. The lectures at the Peabody Institute have also come liberally in aid of the same purpose. The Mechanics' Institute of to-day has, therefore, the advantage of a narrower field of obligation than that which was before it when its duties were assumed. But its obligations are none the less imperative because they are fewer. Its capacity for usefulness has grown with its ability to concentrate its means and efforts, and define and simplify its aims. For many years after its establishment, the annual fairs or exhibitions of the Institute absorbed a good deal of its energy at first, with excellent results, but later on, without great acceptance or much evidence of practical utility. Some of them were very interesting and creditable displays, and 174 ART IN EDUCATION. there were occasions when they brought together some of the newest and cleverest inventions and most ingenious mechanics of the country. But to make them generally popular or, perhaps, I should more accurately say to make them pay there was a gradual departure from the strict line of their mechanical specialty. It is mortifying to admit, that in so large and thriving a community there should have been a necessity for this, but, as I shall presently take leave to observe, with more particularity, it was not an unusual experience among us. It must be admitted that, from the beginning, the Institute was wont to travel some- what ambitiously, in its exhibitions, into the domain of what was supposed to be " high art." The results, for the most part, it is no unkindness now to say, were, perhaps, more entertaining than instructive. I may be permitted, however, to recall an incident, not altogether without interest and value in its way, which shows that these little ostentations were in the right direction and sometimes bore good fruit. In November, 1851, the new hall of the Institute, in which we are, was already sufficiently completed for the holding of the yearly exhibition. It was then the largest edifice in the whole country which was devoted exclusively to the advance- ment of the mechanic arts. Under the impulse of the warm and energetic feeling which had caused its erection, the first exhibition held in it was so great and genuine a success that it may well be remembered with pride. Among the objects presented "deposited," it was called were a large number which had been benevolently classified, in the catalogue, under the head of " The Fine Arts." Of the committee of judges on that class I had the undeserved honor to be chairman. ART IN EDUCATION. 175 While considering, with mingled wonder and despair, the multitude of hopeless aspirations after immortality, in paint and canvas, with which they had to deal kindly, the com- mittee had their attention attracted and their minds relieved by a singular-looking little contribution, which was humble enough in its pretensions and appeared to have been shelved, in the background, by some one, who no doubt honestly regarded that as the proper place for it. Upon examination, we found that it was a copy, or rather, an imitation, in bas- relief, of a well-known picture by Teniers. The material, as well as I remember, was the building marble of Baltimore county, and the entire work comprised frame as well as pic- ture, in one piece. Although the treatment was not very skilful, and the material did not lend much attraction to the sculptor's modest effort, it required but a glance, to see that the longing and the aspiration of the artist were there, and that there was promise of a name and a future in the touch of the untrained hand. Upon inquiry, we found that it was the work of a young and unknown mechanic in the city, a journeyman stone-cutter, who was altogether without artistic education or the means of acquiring it. It was not in the power of the committee to do more than encourage the ambition which the Institute had no means of fostering : o / but we did our best, by rendering the judgment which I take leave to read you, from the contemporary records of the Institute. " No. 801. The work, which, in our judgment, possesses the highest degree of artistic excellence, among those admitted to competition, is the bas-relief, in marble, from Teuiers' 1 Smokers/ cut and deposited by Mr. William H. Rinehart. 176 ART IN EDUCATION. The committee consider the artist as entitled to the most favorable notice and the highest reward." Immediately following, on the record, is the action of the Committee on Awards : "801. William H. Rinehart, at Mr. Baughman's, for a basso-relievo in marble from Teniers' ' Smokers/ gold medal." I had not the honor of a personal acquaintance with Mr. Rinehart until long after, when he was at the height of his reputation, and as near the zenith of his delightful genius as life permitted him to reach. It was after he had returned to his home, in 1872, to erect at Annapolis, under a commission from his native State, his noble statue of our great Chief- Justice. Circumstances threw me into close relation with him, which soon led to cordial friendship, and in the freedom of our intercourse I one day said to him, that we had been acquaintances longer than he knew. When I gave him the explanation, which he asked, he manifested the deepest sensi- bility, and told me, with much emotion, that it was impossi- ble for me fully to appreciate the influence of the simple incident which I recalled, upon his hopes and his career. It was, he said, the earliest public recognition of his right to believe that there was something in him, and he owed more than he could express, to the pride and encouragement it gave him, in his poverty and toil. I confess that, ever since, I have ceased to think of the " fine arts " of the older Institute, with the levity which they once inspired. Whole acres of bad canvas were worth enduring nay, even worth exhibit- ing for the sake of that one tender shoot of genius, watered in its struggle with the clods. ART IN EDUCATION. 177 And this brings me to the more practical considerations which belong to the present occasion, and which I trust you will pardon my delay in reaching. In the allusions which have just been made to the art exhibitions of the Institute in former years, it has, of course, been as far as possible from my purpose or disposition, to disparage such displays when made under proper conditions. But art, without school and teaching, is in all its forms the most baseless of fabrics ; and the necessity of labor, which is the first lesson to be taught, brings with it, as its universal concomitant, the obligation to wait. To oifer general encour- agement to the display of crude and uneducated effort, is perhaps the most effective method, in most cases, of stifling what might be talent, by submerging it in the pleasant and perfumed waters of self-satisfaction. Nothing need be said, I am sure, of the effect which is likely to be produced upon the unformed artistic tastes of a community, by the distribu- tion of prizes which must go, for lack of better, to works which have their only merit from comparison with others that are worse. It was not, however, for want of good intentions, or of knowing how they should be carried out, that the Institute failed, for so many years, in this part of its purposes. Teachers and schools are not, in all respects at least, like those exquisite plants we know of, which blos- som and are fragrant on no better diet than the air. It is idle and absurd to calculate upon producing noteworthy results in art education, or in education of any sort, with scanty means. There must be good and abundant models, and all sufficient materials and appliances, in the hands of competent teachers, who are paid what their ability and use- 23 178 ART IN EDUCATION. fulness deserve, so that they may dedicate their whole time and talents to their work, and do it with all their might. Individual poverty, of course, can only do the best it may, but public institutions, which assume a duty to the public and are expected to discharge it, cannot live upon half rations. It is our duty, as we all know, and it makes us better, to pray and be thankful for our daily bread ; but a sad heart and a weary mind must come from always thinking of it. And so it is, with institutions like that with which we are concerned to-night. If gentlemen are willing, as their officers, to give time and service, without reward, to the public interests which they promote, it is the duty of the public to meet them half way. They ought not to be hampered by inadequate resources, or disheartened by the vain effort to accomplish their work with only half the necessary tools. Their teachers, I repeat, should be liber- ally, and in all contingencies fairly, provided for. Their pupils should be tempted to labor and learn, by all the facilities and appliances which make such labor a delight and give to it speed and progress. They should never, for an instant, be kept down from excellence, by lack of example or of guidance, or of help to reach it. Neither officer nor teacher nor pupil should have his hands tied, or even hindered, in his work, by mean economies. It is because the Institute has never been thus favored or, to speak more properly, because, in this regard, it has never been fairly dealt with that it has fallen so far short, from time to time, in the attainment of what was hoped from it by its founders. It is in view of this, that the admirable exhibition which we are now closing is so much a marvel, and that all to ART IN EDUCATION. 179 whom we owe it are so much entitled to the thanks of the community. I call it admirable, not for the sake of saying a pleasant and a kindly thing, for I should have no right to say it here, even as a compliment, unless it were deserved. It is not that the works exhibited arc perfect, or pretend to be. It is not so much that the order of their excellence is high, although the merit of many of them is undoubtedly remark- able. It is that study and care and progress are visible in almost all of them, and conspicuous and striking in many. It is that they afford indisputable proof of thorough and skilful teaching, and excellent and general capacity to learn. It is impossible, I think, for any man, with an intelligent appreciation of such things, to have examined the specimens exhibited, without having his interest in the Institute deepened and his desire to serve it excited. And these specimens, too, are not "deposits" as in former days the efforts of ambi- tious exhibitors. They are the school's own daily, actual work, as it comes from the hands of its pupils. They are the showing of what two years have done for it, under many disadvantages, and of how much more and better it could do, if its hands were strengthened as they should be. When I said, a few moments ago, that the experience of the Institute, in this latter particular, was not a novelty in Baltimore, it was with regret, but with a strong conviction that the truth on that subject, whether flattering, or agree- able, or the contrary, ought to be spoken plainly and without reserve, on an occasion like the present. The imputation of presumption, which may possibly attach to speaking it, should not hinder its utterance by any man who is fit to be heard. The truth then, undoubtedly, is, that the past history of 180 ART IN EDUCATION. Baltimore, and indeed of Maryland, has not been one of liberality to institutions of benevolence, or education, or general usefulness. I do not speak of legislative or muni- cipal liberality, nor is either in my mind. I speak of individual liberality of the willingness of our citizens to contribute, of their own means, and according to their means, to such institutions as I have described institutions which cannot be used for patronage, for power, or for influence, and from which he who gives them endowment can expect no other return, than that which comes to him in common with the rest of the community. Until of late years, it is true that we have had among us but few really great fortunes. Even now, the number is of course far smaller in Baltimore than in many other cities less, in fact, than in several of its own class and population. But the community has always been a prosperous one, when it chose to be ; and no one remem- bers the time when there were not rich men among us, who had abundance and to spare. It is a city of ver,y large wealth to-day, and there is great ability to give, among its people supposing, always, the desire to give. And yet we can readily count, upon our fingers, all the large endowments which have ever been bestowed upon public institutions in Baltimore. One would be sorry to think, and should be slow to believe, that this has arisen from a greater unwillingness to part with money than exists elsewhere. In many ways, our people are proverbially free-handed, and we all know how prodigally, at times, their money has followed their sympathies. Their backwardness in the matter to which I am referring arises very obviously, it seems to me, from other causes. They have never sufficiently appreciated the value and force of ART IN EDUCATION. 181 co-operative effort, even in their business enterprises. Their energies have almost always taken an individual direction. Without reproaching them with too strict an adherence to the Franklinian religion of " every man for himself," it cannot be denied that their method has too generally been that of "every man by himself." And so, in those matters of public utility, apart from business and profit, which are committed elsewhere to institutions especially organized and endowed, they have been guided by the same false principle, and have fallen into the same unwise and unprogressive prac- tice. Indeed, a closer analysis would most probably demon- strate that it is matter of habit, mainly, and that neither principle nor calculation has much to do with it. But what- ever it be, and whatever it may cost our pride to be frank about it, it is provincial altogether, and not metropolitan. It is pardonable in a village or a town, but is unworthy of a great and prosperous community, with such capabilities and such a possible future as ours. It becomes us to know, and to act as if we knew, that there are some things of largest import to us, outside and beyond our daily work and busi- ness, for which we must not lean on legislation, and which we cannot trust to individual zeal and unorganized effort. The subject is one of large scope, in itself and its suggestions, but this is not the place to deal with it, except in so far as it touches the special occasion. While, however, we assume, upon the one hand, that it is the duty of the citizen a duty coupled with his broadest and best interests as such to promote and give his aid to public institutions which have large public and social purposes to serve, it must be conceded, on the other, that he has the right 182 ART IN EDUCATION. to scrutinize and be satisfied before he gives. Every organ- ization which calls for public support is bound to show cause why it should exist and be kept alive, and it is because this Institute has no fear of such challenge, that I speak so earn- estly for it to-night. I have already endeavored to show how and why its aims and purposes have grown fewer and more definite, in the progress of time. At present, the clever, indefatigable men by whom it is directed have wisely con- fined their efforts, for the most part, to its development as a school of art and design, with chief and especial reference to instruction in industrial art. There was a time, doubtless, in the memory of some of us, when argument might have been required, to satisfy a promiscuous audience, anywhere in the United States, that art, in any of its applications or departments, was other than a dilletanteism at best, if not a wasteful luxury. Mr. DuMaurier's " Cimabue Browns," if they had been known in that day, would have been pretty generally accepted as the genuine type of all art worshipers. Even the word " aesthetics," however, had not then been invented. Many of us can remember when an American crowd, on the most jubilant occasions, was indeed very dis- mal as to its raiment, and when the bright and charming colors, with which beauty, like the earth and sky, now makes itself more beautiful and us more thankful, were looked on, even by those who were no Puritans, with some suspicion of the "Scarlet letter." Happily, however, that geological period has passed. Art is now everywhere in the gallery of the man of taste and wealth ; in the public edifice and the private dwelling ; in the fabrics that we wear, the books that we read and the furniture that we use in the show-fronts of ART IN EDUCATION. 183 the shops, the handbills and circulars of trade, and the very placards on the street corners. The Christinas toy-book of your children is now a work of genius. There is a world of grace and beauty under Kate Greenaway's window, which would have dazzled the whole "growing infancy " of the first half of the century. Much more of genuine art is in the cast- ings of a poor man's stove, to-day, than hung, begilt, upon the walls of many a rich man's dwelling, in years we can recall. The " trumpet-muzzled " pitcher, or ewer, of past times, which we may see, even yet, in the grimy repose of the second-hand furniture shops, is now supplanted, in the humblest of our homes, by a vase, which, though it be of the cheapest and coarsest material, has all the lines of Grecian or Etruscan grace. The commonest utensils of our household service have now a beauty of form and of color, which were once taken to be possible only in things of great price. Think of the decorations of our public conveyances, and conceive, if you can, on what prophetic soul the dream of an Eastlake coach could have dawned, in the days when our corner-stone was laid. What gardener would then have dared to frighten a lawn or a terrace from its propriety, by painting his flow T er tubs bright scarlet? Some unprincipled person once undertook to classify the practice of the law as one of the " arts of design." However that may be, it cer- tainly was not a decorative art, when I first knew it. In the office of the lawyer, as in the counting-room of the mer- chant, the prime object seemed to be, to exclude everything which might suggest that the occupants could possibly have a taste of any description. They went as near as could be to Tom Paine's libel on the Society of Friends that if they 184 ART IN EDUCATION. had had the coloring of creation, they would have made it all drab. We have got the better of that greatly nowadays, I am glad to say ; and there are merchants and lawyers both, who are unlike the old time children of Israel, in this, at least, that they do not " make them dens." All this means something, I fancy. It does not mean that we are a people of artists. It is very far from meaning that we have learned to know art and to judge it as only they who know it can. But it does mean that to a people who, in their struggle with the wilderness, thought only of conquering it, and, in their struggle for predominance and wealth, thought only of winning them, there has come, in the hour of their greatness and success, a revelation of the beauty and splen- dor which may illuminate and glorify this work-day world. They may still testify their sense of these imperfectly and poorly ; they may accept the false, for a time, and think it true ; but the day at least of their insensibility and uncon- sciousness, is over. What contented them once will content them no longer. They have learned that the senses have pleasures, of the simplest sort, which elevate and refine, and the delight of those pleasures they will not forego. If they cannot have the best art, they will have the best they can, and for them, henceforward, the hand of the artisan must catch a spark from the hand of the artist. Whether this is a blessing, or is not, is a question which I should be ashamed to discuss. But whatever else it be, it is a fact, and must be dealt with as such. The only practical question is whether we can afford to despise it. Can we let our people go untaught of the arts of construction and design, when all the sister communities with which we rank ourselves are ART IN EDUCATION. 185 straining every nerve to teach them? Are the mechanic- arts so small an element in our prosperity, that we can safely let them rim or rust in the worn-out grooves of thirty years ago? When the demand all around us is for skilled workmen, are we to settle down to workmen without skill ? Are the people who are born to the necessity of labor, to be furnished with no means of lightening and refining it? Do the best we may, we can never dispense altogether with the proletary and the drudge ; but, in Heaven's name, let us help him, if we can, to the means of being something better let us make the hewers of wood and drawers of water as few as may be. This is not only the duty of a republican and Christian community, but its best interest as well. Think of the weariness that will be lightened by art-labor, to those who are weak and yet must toil. Think of the penniless and helpless women, who will have pleasant and congenial work, away from rude contact and piteous temptation. Think of the young men of poor estate, whose tastes will be developed, whose natures will be refined, and to whom avenues of inde- pendence, and perhaps distinction, will be opened. Can any man look another in the face and say that these things are not to be coveted ? And yet, how shall we attain them ? The children of toil cannot educate themselves. Of the many even to whom work brings comfort, it brings the means of but little more. As maturity comes on, the son takes up the father's tools, and his education, for the most part, ends. What the workshop teaches him, more or less rudely, he learns, and little else. Unless some one helps him to improvement and development, it is only exceptionally that he ever reaches them. Individual help may serve in 24 186 ART IN EDUCATION. individual cases, it is true ; but a large and public need can only be supplied by public effort and the public hand. Now, what has this community attempted in that direc- tion ? Macaulay reports Sir William Maule as wont to say, that " private schools make poor creatures and public schools sad dogs." But what of no schools at all ? In this city of ours and this year of grace, there is not one single public academy of art, of any sort, except that within whose almost naked walls we are. The elementary instruction in drawing which is given in our public schools, is necessarily limited, and a large portion of the pupils are compelled to leave them at an early age, as the report of the commissioners explains, in order to learn trades for their future support. There is no public institution where mechanical, or architectural, or decorative drawing, or drawing or modelling from nature or from casts, is pretended to be thoroughly taught, and espe- cially to adults. That there is no place of public instruction in the use of colors, in water or in oil, goes without saying. In fact, the want of sufficient and capable teachers is as con- spicuous and natural, as the want of encouragement and occu- pation for them. The ladies of the Decorative Art Society, with commendable zeal and excellent success, have done their best in the good work, but they stand almost entirely alone within their limited sphere. The great mass of the wealth and influence of the community keeps aloof and gives no help. I will not ask whether this is creditable. Is it tolerable? But for the recent grant of a small annual appropriation, by the wise liberality of our municipal government, the means for the late display by the Institute the means, indeed, of making that display possible would not have been within ART IN EDUCATION. 187 its reach. Successful as this has been standing as the Insti- tute does, among the largest organizations of its class in the country, both as to the number of its pupils and the extent of its work it is painful to contemplate the scanty resources by which the ability and energy of its officers and teachers have been held in check. One almost blushes to see the small array of borrowed and battered casts to which the pupils have been confined, in drawing and modelling after the antique. Of objects of art which would instruct their eyes and keep alive and stimulate their perception and sense of beauty in form and color, there are none to speak of. There is little or nothing to create the atmosphere in which alone art can draw its freest breath. Nor is this all. Of the day pupils there are comparatively few of the class who live entirely by their own labor. The necessity of supporting themselves keeps constantly away large numbers of female pupils, to whom the school would be most desirable and use- ful, and to whom night attendance is not permissible. In looking at the excellent and promising work of the night classes, it is touching, to any one of sensibility, to think that the young men who have produced it have done so at the expense of their rest and recreation, after long days of toil for bread. What a benevolence it would be, on the part of any man who could afford it, to lay the foundation of a fund by which the more promising and poorer of these young men and women might be assisted, while they learned what the Institute could teach them. How much of gratitude a rich man would deserve, not only from the institution and its pupils, but from every man and woman in our limits, if he would endow a museum of industrial art, connected with 188 ART IN EDUCATION. the Institute a standing exposition of the capabilities and methods and triumphs of skilled and educated labor ! In all the leading European nations, and in many of the States and cities of America, these collections are the noblest and most effective effort of the last quarter of a century, in the application of art to industry. The museum is treated as the necessary adjunct of the school, and together they teach not only the artisan, the artist and the citizen, but the teachers more than all. In the ample and admirable report of a spe- cial committee appointed by this Institute, and in a memorial address by its managers to the General Assembly of Mary- land at its last session, this subject is treated with a fulness and intelligence which leave nothing to be said ; and I could wish that some of those who have the means to gratify the impressive suggestions of those able papers, would take the thing manfully to heart. Is there no mechanic in all Baltimore, made rich by merit and labor in his calling, who has pride enough in it to dedi- cate some portion of his earnings to its elevation and improve- ment ? Can it be that there is not one such, who remembers the difficulties of his own early manhood the hard conflict between his desires and his opportunities, between his ambi- tion to learn and his lack of means of instruction ? llemem- beriug these, can any such man hesitate to give something out of his abundance, to remove from the paths of others the thorns which beset his own ? If prosperous industry has relieved him from the necessities and taken him out of the working ranks of his class, can lie fail to have a grateful sense of what he owes it, or to feel that he will best pay his debt to it and to the community which fostered him, by ART IN EDUCATION. 189 giving a helping hand to those of his own people who are wrestling too hard with poverty to look up for light? Is there no merchant no other man of business in Baltimore, who feels sufficiently the strength of the tie between capital and labor, to recognize the dependence of the one upon the manhood, the intelligence, the elevation of the other ? Can. such men fail to know how their endowment of such an institution as this, with their money and their sympathy, in the interest of mechanical culture and development, would strengthen those ties and sweeten that dependence? I know how easy it is to indulge in that most delightful form of benevolence the giving away or counselling the gift of other people's money. We have all known many good people, who were so well satisfied with dispensing that sort of bounty, that they were content to live and die without being ostenta- tious of any other. Whatever reproach, therefore, of that sort, the suggestions I have made are open to, I must accept. Let me protest, however, that the endowments which I have so earnestly counselled would involve no very enormous draught upon the treasures of the community. We learn, from the report of Provost Morison, that the cost of the superb col- lection of casts presented by Mr. Garrett to the Peabody Institute has thus far fallen short of fifteen thousand dollars. The foundations of an art museum, in this Institute, might be laid at comparatively small expense. Loans to it w r ould follow, when a place was made for them, and liberal gifts would follow loans. The beginning of a fund in aid of poorer pupils need not be large. Once set, the good exam- ple of such giving would be followed. One man's attention would be attracted by what excited the sympathy and warmed 190 ART IN EDUCATION. the benevolence of another. Every one who gave would feel an interest in the object of his bounty, if for no better reason than Sterne gives, when he says that we water a weak flower because we have planted it. I have already trespassed so long upon your patience, that a single further suggestion will end my appeal to your indul- gence. It has long been ray own conviction, that one of the most direful needs of education, in this State, is the establish- ment of a technical school for scientific, mechanical instruction. There is absolutely nothing of the sort upon the soil of Mary- land a blot upon the intellectual and, indeed, the business record of a community, whose productive and mechanical capacity is so large and varied as our own. The class for whom such instruction is needed are the very class Avho cannot afford to seek it at a distance, and, except out of Maryland, no Maryland man can find it. Every one, who is at all familiar with the subject, knows that in all the large enterprises where mechanical agencies are needed, the demand is now for mechanics not only skilled, but thoroughly and scientifically educated. The so-called " practical man " whose knowledge is simply empirical, and whose facts lie isolated in a vacuum is being pushed fast to the wall. He is a victim of the survival of the fittest. Our mechanics are at a sad disadvantage, from the absence of opportunity to qualify themselves for this new order of things. An honor- able and lucrative profession, which may well be classed among those best deserving the appellation of " learned," is thus practically closed to a large number of the most vigorous intellects of our state. I have heard with great satisfaction, that it is proposed to convert the ancient foundation of St. ART IN EDUCATION. 191 John's College, at Annapolis, into a technological school. But, as that depends upon the legislative will, and as the ways of legislatures are in the depths of the sea and often in many other depths I look upon this project with more of hope than of confidence. A liberal private endowment of such a department, in connection with the Maryland Institute, would fill up the measure of its already exceeding usefulness, while it liberated the mechanical education of our people from the caprices of the General Assembly. As the Masons said, when the corner-stone was laid " So mote it be ! " ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE EIGHTH ANNUAL COMMENCEMENT McDoNOGH INSTITUTE, JUNE 3, 1882. JOHN McDONOGH. ~\T~ EARLY forty years ago, as I stood upon the wintry -i- i banks of the Mississippi river, a short distance above New Orleans, waiting with a friend for the ferry, I saw a skiff approaching from the other side. It contained a single passenger, whose appearance, as he landed and came near me, attracted and fixed my attention. As I remember him, he was a singular-looking old man, tall, gaunt, erect, and of strongly-marked features, with an expression of much force and more austerity. He carried a very large and plethoric umbrella, like that which we are all so familiar with, as the companion of Mrs. Gamp and the " unprotected female." He was dressed in a clean but well-worn, if not threadbare, suit of black, with a close-bodied coat and white cravat, looking very much like a somewhat ascetic country clergyman, ill supported by his parish. I give you the type, because it is unfortunately familiar enough to be readily recognized, it being strangely true, that the prohibition against muzzling the ox which treadeth out the corn, appears to be least appre- ciated in the rural districts, where one would think that its application would be best understood. As however, the ox has given way to the threshing-machine, which does not eat, 195 196 JOHN McDONOGH. perhaps the modified analogy may be supposed applicable to the parson. My companion to return to my narrative perceiving that the stranger whom I have described was an object of curiosity to me, enquired if I did not know who he was, and upon my replying in the negative, told me that he was John McDonogh, one of the wealthiest citizens of Louisiana, and a man of singularly eccentric habits, some of which he described. Mr. McDonogh's appearance, as I have said, though quite consistent with eccentricity, gave certainly no evidence of riches; and, upon expressing my surprise at the wealth ascribed to him, I was informed that he was an extremely close and penurious man in fact, to be plain a confirmed and notorious miser. Not taking much personal interest in that sort of people, it is probable that I should never have thought again of Mr. McDonogh, had I not seen, some five years afterwards, the announcement of his death and of the noble and unexpected purposes to which, by a will prepared long before I saw him, he had dedicated the hoard- ings of his lifetime. The picture, which I have endeavored to draw for you, came back to me, then, upon the instant, with all the freshness of the first impression ; and I have the scene upon the river shore as vividly before me now, with John McDouogh, " in his habit as he lived/' as if years and changes and war and misery had not swept in between, as dark and pitiless as the waters by whose rush we stood. Least of all things, as you may well imagine, did it occur to me, when I saw the old man, for the first and last time, and heard of him only as a greedy niggard, that here, to-day, a thousand miles from where I left him and after more than a third of a century, I should be standing, amid the ripening JOHN McDONOGH. 197 fruits of his benevolence and foresight, to praise the goodly works which have lived after him to bless him. It is not, after all, a barren commonplace, to say that the best, and oftentimes although not always the most endur- ing record of remembrance, is that which is written on men's hearts. That the hope and desire of such remembrance was a warm and moving impulse in the Founder of this Institute is plain, from the touching request, in his will the " little favor " as he humbly calls it that the children of his schools should be permitted, every year, " to plant and water a few flowers" around his resting place. But if, beyond this natural yearning for the human sympathy of which he had sought so little while he lived this desire to prolong, through all the summers of the coming years, those " Pious thoughts, which visit, at new graves, In tender pilgrimage " he felt, in his loneliness and isolation, the longing after that " Resurrection in the minds of men," with which few pulses are too dull to throb, he could not easily have built for himself a monument, from which his name would be less likely to crumble than this beneficent Foundation. Where large benevolence is the spontaneous outpouring of a habitual and natural impulse, there is nothing to say of it but words of love and praise. But it is a curious problem, to students of human nature this prodigal giving of large gifts, by men whose lives have been spent in the hungry and eager pursuit of accumulation ; men, for whose greed no gains 198 JOHN McDONOGH. were too petty, for whose savings no mite was too small. We look upon it, almost with the wonder and perplexity of the fisherman in the Arabian story, when, out of the paltry copper vessel which he held in his hands, there rose and took form before him a genie, " twice as high as the greatest of giants." And yet the phenomenon is frequent enough for us to be assured that it has a fixed and certain basis in the constitution of humanity. Its attendant circumstances generally teach us that, like almost everything which springs from human motive, it is as apt to have its roots in the weakness as in the strength of our nature. Of course, it is hardly worth while to discuss the liberality which merely gives away what the giver can no longer keep, or what, if kept, he cannot enjoy. In the latter case, nevertheless, he has to overcome the desire of keep- ing and the pride and power of possession, which, although hardly to be called enjoyment, are full of the elements of passionate selfishness and self-assertion. To a man in the vigor of life, or even in the decline of an active and domi- nant career, the temptation is almost irresistible, to postpone till the last moment the surrender of what he has striven and lived for, and what chiefly makes the influence and power he is accustomed to and covets. Analysing the processes by which that temptation is so frequently and conspicuously overcome, it is bewildering to note how often the very forces which spring from self are those by which its more grovelling tendencies are met and counteracted. Ambition the very ostentation of riches the pride, instead of the joy, of giv- ing the poor desire of notoriety even simple vanity all have their part sometimes, in the good work. This, per- haps, is only saying, with all deference to the great poet, JOHN McDONOQH. 199 that we are more than " half dust," and very far from being " half Deity ; " that all, except the most privileged natures, will feel the spur or the clog of their human frailty, even when their faces are turned and their path is towards the heights. In spite, too, of it all, when conscious weakness begins to prop itself upon unselfish endeavor ; when ambition is willing to pale its fires in the simplicity of doing good ; when pride, ostentation, vanity all the multitudinous streams and undercurrents of self-seeking are content, no matter why or how, to flow into channels undefiled, it is impossible to help feeling and rejoicing that the waters may be living waters, though they be not free from the stain and the taste of earth. And if we find that the man, in the midst of his getting and his hoarding, has quietly dedicated a part of his life and his best reflections to the good which he has contem- plated ; that alone, in the silence of his own thoughts, he has set himself to work it out narrowly, and in a poor and half enlightened way, if you please, but still with all his heart, according to his lights we are compelled to realize that the higher purpose has got the better of the lower impulse, and that the motives have been transfigured into the work and glorified. The man himself has grown, and has grown better, before our eyes, with the growth of his resolve. The very aim at something higher than his daily level has lifted his sight upward, and his nature has gone up with it, as he looked. He may have wrapped himself in discounts and percentage till his own last day of grace came round, and his grade among his kind may have been the lower for his traffic, but, at least, he has recognized something out- side of it and of himself, and, if he has not broken his 200 JOHN McDONOGH. chains, he has at last prevented the iron from entering altogether into his soul. These considerations are not suggested, here, by way of apology for the life of our Founder or as qualifications of the gratitude which enshrines his memory. But, upon occasions like this, when every man who speaks is, in some sort, a teacher, it is not becoming that the moral of the teaching should be open to misconstruction. It is not meet that the sense and acknowledgment of obligation, the grateful tribute, the affectionate remembrance, should wear the seeming of homage to wealth, or of indiscriminate reverence for those who have gathered it, merely because they have at last dis- pensed it. At the same time, it were invidious and unworthy to stand in the light of a dead man's bounties and dissect too keenly the hand which bestowed them. The true line lies between respect for the dead and respect for ourselves. The honest lesson to be taught is that which the life truly teaches. It is a lesson to be studied in charity and yet not blindly ; not to be learned, on the one hand, from the covetousness which gathered, nor, on the other, from the generosity which gave, but from the man's entire career, as a revelation of himself of how he wrestled with his nature and was over- come by it or overcame it. The fact is, that people generally expect too much, from those whom they desire, or are asked, to think well of or to praise. Men who fill a large place in the world and are high in the ranks of its greatness, are apt to be raised by the popular enthusiasm to an impossible standard, or misjudged by popular disappointment, because they do not come up to it. If Washington had been as he is generally described and JOHN McDONOGH. 201 regarded, he would, of course, have been a model of all the virtues, and of all the proprieties as well, but a very wooden model, notwithstanding a lay figure, as it were, among the immortals. The popular reverence for him has almost made him less than man, in its effort to make him more. The idea of the Father of his Country, as he was, with the temptations and frailties, the temper and passions of com- mon men, would take away the breath of half his worshippers among the multitude. They forget that he belonged to the line of heroes and not of demigods, and that his greatness was in his very manhood. It is only on the stage they should remember that the kings of men fight their battles in crowns and coronation robes, as we have seen Richard fight on Bos worth field. As people judge the great ones of the earth, so do they judge its humbler benefactors and each other. They expect a character to be all of a piece a great man to be always great a liberal man to be always gener- ous a mean man to be always mean a great general to be always, as it were, on horseback. There can be no wilder misconception than this, of human character. We are full of antagonisms which never counteract each other, and of inconsistencies which will not submit to be averaged. There is no such thing as deducting our moral debits from our moral credits, or vice versa, and getting at the net balance. If our mental and moral constitution were like an algebraic equation, where equal opposite quantities cancel each other and can be stricken out, human nature would be, indeed, a comparatively simple study. But, unhappily, its rules do not work in that way. It is not a matter of plus and minus merely. Our qualities run, as it were, in separate grooves, 26 202 JOHN McDONOOH. each in its own direction. They cross each other rudely, sometimes, and check each other frequently, for good or for ill, but they seldom agree to combine or compromise and run together. Humanity, in action, is perpetually stumbling over itself, when there is nothing else to obstruct it. Half the time it is in its own way. It constantly thwarts its own best pur- poses and disappoints its own firmest resolves. So too, upon the other hand, it sometimes starts into unexpected virtue or greatness, for a while, from very shame at its own littleness happy if it does not relapse, as suddenly, into littleness, when it counts the cost. The follies and blunders of great and wise men are among the chief warnings of history. The backslid- ings of good men point many of its saddest morals. An ingenious Spanish poet goes so far as to develop, in a clever epigram, his preference for the ignorance of the learned over the knowledge of the ignorant. He assumes them both to be recognized elements of comparison. The old proverb, which makes our surnames " go by contraries," seems quite as applicable to ourselves. Some of the bravest men who have ever lived were afraid of ghosts. Hosts of those who have built temples in all devotion, and covered their altars with offerings, have been the most reckless and wicked in violating the laws of the Deity to whose holy name they were reared. When Lord Byron was at Missolonghi, lavishing his fortune with prodigal enthusiasm, on the freedom and redemption of Greece, he is said to have quarrelled almost daily with the boatmen, about the coppers for their fares. I am afraid that George Peabody would always go afoot, when he could, rather than run the risk of being overcharged by a JOHN McDONOOH. 203 cabman. But why should we look about for illustrations of human inconsistency, when there is scarcely one of us who has not had his own temper and toleration tried, by that compound and marvel of all incompatibilities and contradic- tions, a sincerely devout and as sincerely intolerant Christian ? We have no choice but to take men as they are, and recognize the truth, that, although the nature of the stock may not be altered by what we graft on it, it may still bring forth precious fruit, according to the graft. A thoughtful writer has well and wisely said, that "Religion does not alter idiosyncrasy. When a fool becomes a Christian, he will be a foolish Christian. A narrow-minded man will be a nar- row-minded Christian, a stupid man a stupid Christian." This observation is quite as just in regard to the operation of other than religious influences and processes upon charac- ter, and as, in the one case, we welcome the change which is wrought by religion, notwithstanding it may have been obstructed and is qualified by natural perversities, so must we be content, in the others, to gather our figs and grapes, although, by some mysterious working of nature, they have come to us from among thorns and thistles. A man's character, as a general rule, is apt to be much more faithfully portrayed in the life which he leads, than in the account which he gives of himself, with the best inten- tions. The one is a photograph, the other is a portrait from memory, by a partial hand. The one is the living and instantaneous, and generally the natural expression of feel- ing, principle and purpose. The other is, at best, a descrip- tion and a recollection, if it be not, as is most likely, an apology. It by no means follows that the story is true, 204 JOHN McDONOGH. because there is an honest purpose to tell it truly. Self- knowledge is as essential, in such case, as perfect candor, and is, at least, as rare. We are quite as apt to apologize to ourselves as to other people, for our shortcomings, and there is no end to our readiness to accept our own explanations. If there be anything in the past which we regret, or of which we are ashamed, we try to persuade ourselves upon retro- spection, that there was something in the circumstances or our motives, which, if fully understood, would justify or at least excuse it. If we put upon record anything in regard to ourselves, for those who are to come after us, we naturally state as facts, what w r e have satisfied ourselves must, or at least ought to have been such ; and the life, which repre- sented us truly, as \ve lived it, is thus handed down in an entirely new edition, " revised and corrected by the author." These reflections, or something like them, are very necessary to be made indeed we can hardly help making them when we compare the actual, practical career of John McDonogh, as men saw it and knew it, with the picture, taken pro- fessedly from the inside, which he gives of himself in his last will and in the instructions which he left to his executors. He protests that he had " much, very much, to complain of the world, rich as well as poor " without pausing to reflect how very much the world, as he dealt with it, had reason to complain of him, and how entirely it was his own fault if it misunderstood him. In his relation to his fellows there was no trace of the loving kindness, which, he fancied, was the inspiration of his life. It was nearly all the other way. He had no friends ; he cherished no kindred ; he gave noth- ing to the poor ; he was grasping and exacting in all his JOHN McDONOQH. 205 dealings, harsh and unmerciful to his debtors, even to the widow and orphan clamoring for his pound of flesh, no matter how much of the heart's blood he brought away with it. And yet, he protested afterwards, with all the earnest- ness of absolute conviction, that during his whole life his soul had " burned with an ardent desire to do good, much good, great good " to his fellow-man, to the honor and glory of his Lord and Master. He even apostrophised the victims, whom he sought to drive to the wall, as " infatuated men ! " because, instead of confessing judgment and allowing them- selves to be sold out, in the interest of universal and post- humous benevolence, they employed counsel to defend them, and were sometimes able to persuade judges and juries that their defenses were just. They ought to have seen, he says, that he was suing them to gather moneys for them and their children and not for himself, and that their attempt to thwart him, and keep their own money, was but a painful illustra- tion of " the frailty, the perversity and sinfulness of our common nature." Consequently, when he had a verdict against him and moved for a new trial, he describes that very commonplace and frequent transaction as a righteous struggle, on his part, against the " injustice and ingratitude" of the defendants ; and he declares that he " swerved neither to the right hand nor the left," but " persevered in an onward course, determined, as the steward and servant of his Master, to do them good, whether they would have it or whether they would not have it." If the courts assisted them in not hav- ing it, he cried out against the courts. " Of Judges and their judgments," he exclaims, " I have also much, very much to complain." He had, in fact, grown old in the world, like 206 JOHN McDONOGH. Carlyle, without finding any one particular by good in it, except his parents and himself. Obviously there is a great deal to protest and rebel against in all this much that consideration for the dead does not require us to accept. It is the language of an enthusiast, proclaiming the holiness and the constancy of his own enthu- siasm. It is the light of the present thrown back on the darkness of the past. It is the natural endeavor of a man who persuades himself that he is an apostle, to reconcile his old and wicked works with his new and burning faith. The history of mankind is full of such delusions and self-deception, and the duty of respect is fulfilled by the world, when it recognizes their sincerity. We are not bound, however, to forget that self-delusion is delusion, because it may happen to be honest and sincere. That McDonogh was thoroughly sin- cere in the " reflections and opinions " which he directed to be recorded and preserved by his executors, I think it impos- sible to doubt. He believed in himself, and they were the revelation of his creed. They bear, all over them, the stamp of conviction, not only genuine but intense. I am not sure that, at last, his intellect did not hover perilously near the point at which men mistake their desires and convictions for direct and divine inspiration. Though he did not illustrate in his life certainly not through the greater part of it the regenerating influences of the religion in which he was trained, he obviously lived, within himself, in what he supposed to be a religious atmosphere more or less hazy, no doubt, and cer- tainly unwholesome and his modes of thinking and feeling had that solemn cast which gives a sort of severe, religious sanction, in some men's minds, to their own carnal resolves JOHN McDONOOH. 207 and unregenerate will. There is a ring in his phraseology, which shows that he was a frequent reader of the Old Testa- ment, and that, like many men before and after him, he conceived a certain force and perhaps sacredness to be given to a statement, a doctrine or a proposition, not very forcible or sacred in itself, by clothing it in the language of Scripture. There is no reason to doubt that he was under much of the same sort of influence, in that regard, which justified the Puritans to themselves in exterminating Indians, under the classification of " the heathen." His temperament was obvi- ously melancholy, and his thoughts were bitter and gloomy. The earth, altogether, was a dismal place to him, except from the point of view of real estate, which he said that he regarded as " the only thing in this world of ours, which approaches anything like permanency." Altogether, with his tendencies and peculiarities developed and exaggerated by seclusion, fanaticism and morbid introspection, it is not only not strange, but is in every way natural, that he should have blended and confounded his desires and his delusions with the realities of his life, and should have ended by believing, with all the fierce intensity of a self-concentred nature, that he had been engaged, from the beginning, in laying the foundations of the mission, upon which he felt himself, at the close, to have been sent. It is enough for us to know and recognize that he did this in good earnest and without doubting, and that, whether he deceived himself or not, he was unconscious of meaning to deceive any one else. He was not the first man whose faith was better than his works. It may be, after all, that he was right in his estimate of himself, and that his life was but 208 JOHN McDONOGH. another of those mysteries of humanity, which are none the less actual because they cannot be fathomed. But I have felt, as I have said already, that I could not do justice to the young people in whose presence I speak, and who will read the life of their benefactor in that spirit of admiration which is born of gratitude, without indicating in what it should be a warning to them, and in what an example. I could not hold up, as I do, to their imitation, the prudence, the intelli- gence, the indomitable will, the industry and patient thrift of John McDonogh his manly independence, his self-reliance and self-denial without teaching them that these admirable qualities have no necessary relation to the grim and ignoble traits with which they were associated in his life and con- duct. They must learn and, under the excellent guidance to which they fortunately are entrusted, they will not be permitted to forget that they were born to live in this world, not merely to die out of it and that their appointed place is in the midst of their fellow-men, discharging man- fully the duties, wrestling cheerfully with the responsibilities, and exchanging kindly the charities, of life. Because the for- tune which McDonogh was enabled to scatter from his death- bed, had been gathered and kept together by all the devices of money-getting and money-saving which commonly contract the heart and debase the spirit, these children of the bounty of his better days must not be deceived into believing that the right way to the benevolence which crowned his life, lies through the dark, repulsive paths by which he reached it. Their homage to his memory will be none the less, from their learning to distinguish between his virtues and his faults, and taking to their bosoms the instructive lessons of both. JOHN McDONOQH. 209 And now let us pass for a moment from the Founder to his Foundation. The old man sleeps in Greenmount, over the hills yonder, and the flowers were reverently strewn upon his grave, yester- day, by the young hands from which he asked and merited that tribute. The marble pile round which they lie, scarce faded yet, is what is called his monument, but his true monu- ment is all about us here. Nor is it here only it is wherever the blessings of his bounty have been spread wherever those whom it has blessed are useful, happy, upright men. Already, during the short period of the existence of this Institute, one hundred and fifty educated youths, on whom, but for its aid, the burden of poverty and ignorance would have rested with all its paralysing weight, have gone forth into society, fitted for its struggles and deserving its rewards. Into almost every walk of useful and active life they have carried the manly and substantial qualities of mind and character, which it has been the special object and effort of this Institute to form and foster. According to their ability and intelligence, they have chosen or found their respective paths in life, and, whether as successful candidates for university honors, or as workers in the less ambitious ways of mechanical or industrial life, it is pleasant and encouraging to know, that scarcely one of them has proven unworthy of his trust and training. For so happy and uncommon a result, the trustees of the Institute are indebted, not only to the able, zealous and most efficient superintendence which it has been their good fortune to secure for their school, but to the wise regulations, which they have themselves adopted, in regard to the admission of its pupils. While respecting, as is their duty, the qualification of poverty 27 210 JOHN McDONOGH. prescribed by the Founder, they have not chosen to regard it as the only one. Compelled to select a few, from among the many to whom indigence was a common recommendation, they have carefully endeavored to choose those whose charac- ter, capacity and associations were most likely to furnish a good soil for the good seed. Any mistakes in their choice they have not hesitated to correct, at once, by making the unworthy or incapable give way to those who were capable and worthy. In both appointments and removals, they have been resolutely scrupulous to exclude personal considerations of all sorts ; and it is as creditable to them, as it is to the municipal corporation from which they derive their authority, that political influences have not been permitted, for an instant, to defile the current of the Founder's charity. Among the competent and successful teachers who are now engaged in the work of the Institute, there are already three of its own graduates, and there is little room for doubt that, within a reasonable period, the places which may become vacant in its corps of tutors and professors, will be mainly filled from the ranks of its own pupils. This is not the place to discuss, with any fulness, the scheme and methods of instruction which the trustees have adopted. In all substantial particulars, and with no change, except for the better, in details, they have strictly adhered to the spirit of the Founder's instructions. They have not been tempted by the natural and happily prevailing tendency towards higher education, to forget that they are charged with the duty of sending forth young men into the world, who are to be fitted chiefly for its practical and material tasks and duties. At the same time, they have repudiated the JOHN McDONOOH. 211 old, narrow and fast-departing notion of purely practical instruction, which so frequently resulted in little more than formulating ignorance and subordinating the intellect to the hands. A glance at the " Course of Instruction " which they have prescribed, will sufficiently disclose with what care and skill they have chosen the middle line discarding a super- ficial and barren inculcation of the simple rudiments and laying, with reasonable thoroughness, the foundation of a liberal, though practical, education. Mr. McDonogh him- self, as might well be supposed, was not very broad or enlightened in his views upon this subject. While, for instance, he did not omit a brief direction that his bene- ficiaries should be instructed in " the science generally of agriculture," he was far more particular in describing, because he better understood, what he meant by " the art of hus- bandry or farming ; " and if the time of the pupils of the Institute were to be literally dedicated, in the detail which he prescribed, to " plowing, hoeing, harrowing, spading, mow- ing, reaping, gathering, housing, thrashing, sowing, planting, gardening, carting and waggoning, making of all agricultural instruments, rearing and attending to animals, rearing and attending to the silk worm and the mulberry tree, etc., etc., etc., etc., at the same time that they are progressing in their education," it is not difficult to characterize or measure the "education," in which they would be likely to "progress." Between the outdoor work, which was thus in his mind, and the large devotion of their indoor hours, which he so strenu- ously inculcated, to " instruction in divine psalmody or sacred music," their four allotted years of preparation, it is safe to say, would have gone by, without their being particularly 212 JOHN McDONOOH. fitted for any other occupation than that of excellent farm laborers on week days, and perhaps of indiiferent choristers on Sundays. From these details, which would have nar- rowed the sphere and belittled the results of the Founder's benevolence, and would have disappointed, beyond measure, his hopes and calculations, it was the duty of the trustees to rise to a higher conception of his wishes. It became them to read the charter of his bounty in the light of the great pur- pose which he proclaimed that of rescuing destitute youth from ignorance and idleness, and " bringing them up in knowledge and virtue, to industry and labor." To this consummation it was their duty to subordinate all lesser considerations and details, and it is a source of no ordinary gratification, to all who are familiar with their progress, that they have discharged that duty with such persistent intelligence and firmness. Nor have the trustees of the institution been less successful in their management and application of its material resources. John McDonogh was very far less rich than he supposed. Indeed there is no stronger evidence of the dominion of his dreams over him, than the future which he anticipated from the institutions for which he provided, and the dimensions to which he fancied that their resources would expand. The pupils of this single institution, he supposed, would number from one to two thousand, from the first, and he thought that with ordinary care, they would be at least ten thousand, in time. The city of Baltimore was not alone in his con- templation. He persuaded himself that his charity would reach not only to the chief maritime cities of the Union " which are too generally hot-beds of vice," as he added in JOHN McDONOGH. 213 parenthesis but to the other large cities of the different States, and even to the towns and villages of Maryland. Archdeacon Paley is reported to have assigned, as a reason for not allowing his wife and daughters to contract shop- debts, that " ready money is a marvellous restraint upon the imagination " yet here was a man, whose whole life had been dedicated to ready money, and whose imagination, neverthe- less, in that very regard, was as boundless as romance. It is true that his estate had to pass as the large estates of child- less men are apt to pass, in this country through the dread ordeal of protracted and enormous litigation. The courts and juries, of which he had so bad an opinion in his lifetime, had their chance at his goods and chattels, lands and tene- ments, after he was gone. The lawyers too, of whom I regret to say that he did not think much more highly than of the tribunals, had their opportunities of posthumous revenge and reprisal. In one way or another, the lamb passed through many thickets and left much of its fleece upon -the brambles by the wayside. The valuation also which McDonogh had set upon many of his investments turned out to be fanciful and often absurd. He had put faith as well as money in swamp lands, where the money, at least, went down, like Raveuswood, among the quicksands. And then the war came, and after the war came reconstruction, as, after death, the judgment. It is no wonder therefore that the dreams and hopes of the enthusiast, which were spread wide enough to cover the nation, should have been folded, like the tent of the magician, until their "stuff" and substance could be held almost in a single hand. And yet, though comparatively small, the resources of this Institute, I am happy to say, are 214 JOHN McDONOGH. actually large. Through faithful and judicious management, its interest-bearing capital, to-day, is over seven hundred thousand dollars. The whole value of the trust estate, at a fair and moderate estimate, is at least nine hundred thousand. Out of the revenue of the trust, without borrowing money or trenching upon capital, and with that admirable sense of appropriateness which is the essence of good taste, the trustees have erected the stately and commodious edifice in which we hold this first commencement. The school which began, in 1873, with but twenty-one pupils, has now fifty all that it can hold. The contemplated addition to the building will enable it soon to receive three times that number. For the vacancies which will exist upon the graduation of the present class, there are more than seventy applicants. Numbers of persons whose means enable them to furnish the best educa- tion to their children, are applying for their admission as paid pupils. Except as a means of increasing the charities of the institution, it is hardly possible for such applications to be favored, but they testify, with obvious sincerity, to the excellence of its teaching and its high standard of dis- cipline and morals. Such is the condition of the Institute. Without debt and freed from litigation without a single obligation, beyond those of charity and duty it stands erect, for the first time, under its own roof-tree, with a noble future flashing in its face. May it continue as heretofore, to be worthy of its destiny, under the smiles of Him who has made of charity a benediction ! Its Founder was sanguine enough to express the conviction that it would not long remain the only one of its kind, in the vicinity of that " noble, philanthropic and JOHN McDONOOH. 215 high-minded city, Baltimore." Let us persuade ourselves that this expression was not rash. Let us believe that there are hearts, in the city of the old man's love, from which this conviction will be echoed yet. Let us hope that there are men among us, to whom the possession of great wealth may yet suggest the association of their names and bounty, with those of McDonogh and Peabody, Hopkins and Pratt. THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY IN ITS RELATIONS TO BALTIMORE. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, FEBRUARY 22, 1883. THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. MR. PRESIDENT; GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD AND OF THE FACULTY : I AM very sensible of the honor which has been done me by the invitation to take part in your proceedings to-day, and yet I have accepted it with considerable hesita- tion. The topics which are most appropriate to the occasion will not bear superficial treatment in such a presence, and it is not easy for a man of my intellectual habits and restricted pursuits to give them any other. The problems of educa- tion, and particularly of the higher education, are occupying, at this moment, not only the best, but the best-trained minds of the world ; and their study and solution have become a noble specialty, into which the best intentions will not justify rash intrusion. One may be permitted to say that what are irreverently called " crotchets " are not altogether absent from even the higher educational atmosphere, and there is, there- fore, the greater reason for dispensing with the crude specula- tions of desultory thinkers. I am not sure that it is not one of the most natural results of the system which this university represents and embodies, 219 220 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. to force upon men who were educated in our American col- leges of half a century ago, a strong and perhaps not very agreeable sense of the comparative shortcomings of their own early intellectual training. I refer, especially, of course, to those who passed at once and young, as was the custom then even more than now there being opportunity for little else from undergraduate life into professional or other special and absorbing avocations. To the most of these I am persuaded that their collegiate course was chiefly valuable, as a memory, a discipline, and an influence ; and that, apart from these, it contributed comparatively little to the permanent material out of which their intellectual life was constructed. Of my own profession, I think I can safely say, that by far the most of them were well content, if they could keep alive the scholarly and classic tastes, which whether the scholarship was much or little according to later tests were bred and nurtured in their college days, and of which no one knows the solace and enjoyment half so well as they whose minds run in one life-long, narrow groove, yearning and longing, it may be, all the while, for something broader and better. Face to face with the precise and accurate teaching and knowledge of to-day, the systematized and ceaseless investi- gation, the critical ordeals, the perpetual search after truth and its fearless recognition when tested and established, the exact and scientific methods, the definite results, the scorn of routine and the rude questioning of tradition, which charac- terize the modern education face to face, I say, with these, we remember our curricula and college examinations of the days gone by with feelings more or less grave, according to each man's sense of humor. It is not altogether human, of THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 221 course, for the undergraduate of those times to forget, or even cease to love, the shade where he sported with his own aca- demic Amaryllis old though she be and faded now but, clearly, to the dullest perception, a new order of things has arisen, and a better. Whether it be a development, or a new species, I remember nothing of my college learning which would enable me to determine. There is one thing, however, which reconciles a man of the old dispensation to the risk of going beyond his depth on one of these occasions, and that is their total freedom from pretension. I have always greatly admired the quiet and unostentatious way in which the anniversaries of this univer- sity have been kept instead of being what is commonly called "celebrated" the notable contrast between the sim- plicity of the announcements and the large and progressive results which are announced. This seems to me not only the natural result of the plan and working of the university, and for that reason of great importance and significance, but very admirable in itself and as an example. Small things are so habitually called by large names among our people, and our little fishes to use Goldsmith's criticism of John- sou are so apt to speak like great whales, that the spectacle of an institution like this, discarding superlatives altogether, and telling its yearly story in a quiet way, without other emphasis than that inherent in the story told, is, to say the least of it, very edifying. One is almost able to flatter him- self, sometimes, that the general tendency to public speaking, in this country, is something less than it once was, and that active elocution is not now quite so commonly regarded as the natural state of man. But, be this as it may, the " tuba, 222 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. mirum spargens sonum," is beginning to go out of fashion as an accompaniment to what is worth telling, and we can- not but welcome, as a public service in that direction, every conspicuous demonstration that the soberer style is all-sufficient for the largest purposes of communication with the people. I alluded, just now, to my own profession that of the law and I hope that I am not disloyal to it in expressing my gratification that the group with which it is generally associated, under the style of "the learned professions," has ceased, except in common and traditionary parlance, to mon- opolize that title. Of course, I should be very far from feel- ing gratification at their being less learned than heretofore if such were the case. What I mean to speak of, as a ground for universal congratulation, is the fact that modern education has developed many other professions all quite as worthy, to say the least, of being called " learned," and some of them involving the largest amplitude and variety of learning which the intellect can grasp. In speaking of these new professions, I deal with them, not merely as groups of students, devoted to research and discovery, and " hiving thought " which is by far too much the common notion of them but as bodies of eminently practical men, whose whole objects and methods are practical, in the truest meaning of the word, and whose business and purpose it is, not merely to find the ore of science, but to dig it, and bring it to the light, and make its products malleable, and adaptable to all the manifold uses of society. No one has illustrated in briefer phrase than Mr. Huxley the action and reaction of the practical and theoreti- cal upon each other in science. I refer to his observation, that while " all true science begins with empiricism," it is THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 223 true science, " exactly in so far as it strives to pass out of the empirical stage into the deduction of empirical from more general truths." With the spread and progress of these new professions, the old idea of the " practical man," the simple empiric uneducated for the most part, except in so far as the manufacturer of pin's heads may be said to have a pin's head education will pass into limbo. New avenues will be opened into the fields of industrial labor and production, and it goes without saying that the soil will respond to the tillage in which the head is guide of the hand. Doubtless the prac- tical man will not yield without a struggle. When Sir Robert Peel proposed to establish the system of penny postage, a depu- tation of paper manufacturers waited upon him with a serious remonstrance, in which they urged that they would suffer incalculable loss, inasmuch as everybody would write upon note-paper instead of letter-sheets. But, precisely as the paper manufacturer has found that the increase of corre- spondence from cheap postage has developed tenfold his former trade, so the merely practical man will discover that the new education, which removes him from the place where he is dangerous or helpless except in his rut, will find him other occupations in which he can thrive, and will teach his children to tread the path, with knowledge, along which he groped in blind routine. It is most desirable, indeed, to have it understood that a multitude of new and truly practi- cal avocations is the natural outcome of the new system and methods of scientific education. As I intimated just now, the average citizen has not altogether overcome the notion that a body of learned men, engaged in daily and laborious scientific research, is a sort of close corporation very wise, 224 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. very able, very eminent, no doubt, but set apart, by its nature and occupations, from the common uses and purposes of every-day life, and leaving its principal traces in the reports of " philosophical transactions." It is hard to make the ordinary thinker realize that the electric flame, which lights the whole coast-line of a continent with the radiance of a new sun, fresh taught to walk the night, was first kindled in a laboratory such as lies but a few paces from where you sit. You could ill persuade him to what an extent the biol- ogist has unravelled the substantial problems of life in all nature, and has already instructed the physician to answer, through their solution, the hourly domestic questioning of disease and remedy. He would be astounded to know how physics and chemistry walk unseen and close by his side, lending him their help at every step of his existence, and at every stage and variety of the labor which supports and the civilization which protects him. He could not easily comprehend that the abstruse mathematics, whose written language may be to him an unknown tongue, is the great vehicle of scientific expression and fact from world's-eud to world's-end, almost bearing, Atlas-like, the globe of science on its shoulders. He little imagines that the philologist whom he supposes to be engaged in word-fancying and word-spelling a process for which he has, himself, supreme contempt is shedding by his labors a new and certain light upon the his- tory of mankind, is tracing the descent and relation of races and people, is separating fable from truth, is putting tradition and story under cross-examination upon the witness-stand, and fixing, even for religious inquiry and Biblical criticism, the certain and firm foundations of faith and dissent. THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 225 I repeat that these things, and others like them, are only half realized as living and practical truths by the average citizen who has work to do and children to educate ; and that the new walks of applied science, to which the teachings of this university open the way, are not yet known and recog- nized as they should, and as I am sure they will be among us, when men are considering the future of those whom they love best and wish to serve best. I should therefore feel, as an humble member of this community, that I had done as good a day's work for it as a man could well do for a com- munity to which he owes much, if I could help to diffuse among its people a thorough comprehension of what this noble endowment holds out to them with full hands. As in most American communities, it is our habit to edu- cate too little. Naturally, I do not refer to those of our people to whom necessity leaves no choice or discretion, but to those who are able, and according to their lights are willing, to educate their children. Their error lies in their false or imperfect notion of what an education really means. Instead of realizing that a young man is most likely to fall into the vocation which suits him best, and to make the most of himself in it after he has been taught enough to enable him to measure his own gifts, and has had sufficient scope of instruction to fit him for any one of various occupations, according to his tastes and opportunities they choose or per- mit him to choose his calling beforehand, and endeavor to shape and mould what he learns to that and that only. Instead of his life-pursuit springing healthily and spontane- ously like an indigenous plant, from those elements of a thoroughly cultivated mental soil which feed it best, his 29 226 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. education is made a sort of hot-bed, to force the plant perhaps against nature in advance of its season, into the market. For the most part, if a professional career is to be adopted, they select the law or medicine. If warned, as they well may be, by the largely overcrowded ranks of both, they distrust the future of the young man in either, his course is shaped, in the main, for some mercantile pursuit, or for one of the many other occupations which are classed under the comprehensive head of " business." For these it is not sup- posed that any peculiar or protracted preparation is essential, the chief requisite being that the victim shall get through early and " go ahead." The idea that he will be the better fitted for every and any calling, and especially for moving from the rear to the front from the ranks to command according to the development of his faculties, the training and discipline of his mind, his knowledge of things knowable and his capacity to apply things applicable does not seem to occur to the great mass of those to whom the destinies of young men are entrusted. Least of all, does it seem to enter their minds that there is a score of occupations, professional in the fullest and practical in the most literal sense, outside of those called " learned," in which a careful scientific education opens the door to the highest usefulness and success. I say noth- ing of the value of knowledge in itself and apart from the returns it brings. I speak here only of its value in use, of the resources and capital which it furnishes, and which neither the accidents of trade nor the vicissitudes of fortune can impair much less destroy. What has been said has been mainly in the interest of the student ; but it is impossible to separate his interest, in these THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 227 regards, from that of the community, or to overestimate the merely economical gain, to the whole country, of an infusion of scientific and educated labor and direction into all its indus- tries and enterprise. It is painful to the last degree, in sea- sons of commercial disaster or depression, to see how absolutely without resource so large a number of our young men are, finding themselves deprived of their ordinary occupation, without knowledge enough of anything outside to enable them to turn in other directions for bread. They have pursuits, but really no calling. Nor is this true only of those who depend upon the vicissitudes of trade or specula- tion ; for nothing is more certain in every industrial crisis than that the uneducated workman is the first to feel the loss of place or the pressure of reduced compensation. To those who may desire to make politics their profession and even to the much larger number who merely seek political preferment it is impossible to overestimate the value of those attainments, which enable a man to deal, in a capable and educated way, with the multifarious and complicated ques- tions of scientific theory and fact, that spring up at every instant in the government of a mighty people like ours. Politics themselves are, of course, a science, and in the true sense one of the noblest of sciences. Practically, however, among us, they are rather what is called, in our old-fashioned law-English, an " art or mystery ; " and they are learned and practiced, as such, though not publicly taught, that I am aware. The Marquis de Costa Beauregard, writing to Joseph de Maistre in 1789, d, propos of the impending revolution in France, made an observation which has always struck me as very clever, in the best style of French cleverness. " Dog- 228 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. matic opinion," he said, " should not touch on politics, for on that head there is no revelation." I am afraid, from some personal experience, that the absence of revelation has not always prevented people from dogmatizing, somewhat actively, upon some political questions in this country ; but I still am Utopian enough to believe that the time is not far off, when a chair of political science will be filled in every university, and men will be taught, in good faith, at all events, the radi- cal distinction between politics and party, and between party and plunder. I am not very sanguine, however, I confess, as to the controlling effect of what men study at the univer- sity, in matters of government, upon their practical political courses ; and I remember that I could not avoid some mental questionings upon that point, when listening with great inter- est, a few years ago, to a very able discourse, in which it was discussed, on one of the anniversaries of this university, by a distinguished gentleman of great authority, who is present here to-day. [President White, of Cornell University.] When entirely convinced, upon satisfactory and indifferent evidence, that a single representative in Congress, from a district which favors protection, has voted openly against a protective tariff, because he was taught free trade at college, I shall be willing to qualify my modest scepticism. Mean- time, let us believe, at all events, with the great English teacher whom I have quoted above, that the time will come, " when there shall be no member of the legislature, who will not know as much of science as an elementary school boy." These suggestions are presented in a loose and informal manner, for they belong too much to the commonplaces of the occasion to be offered in a more ambitious way. Indeed, THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 229 it is because they are commonplaces, and yet are not under- stood and appreciated as they should be, that I have made them, from choice, the burden of what I have to say. If I could reach the car of every man in this community, who has children whom he can afford to educate, I could not befriend him more, than by impressing him with a sense of the waste and folly of seeking for them, elsewhere, the instruction which is so prodigally at their service here. It is true that this is a university, and that it stands already, through its work and workers, in the front rank of universities. It is true that its great destiny, in the world of knowledge, is to be wrought out in its character of university. But it is a college as well. Its collegiate department is ample, its instruction thorough, its methods of the best. The teacher, instead of being, merely, as is so often the case and as in the olden days he almost invariably was a sort of circulating medium between the text-book and the undergraduate comprehension is the companion and co-worker of his pupils. Surrounded in the study and the class-room, the laboratory and the lecture-room, with all the books and appliances which belong to the par- ticular department ; segregated, for the time, from all but the particular work and his companions in it ; stimulated by competition, co-operation and encouragement ; kept up to the mark by rigid, and yet wise and fair examinations ; with nothing lacking to his development that educational science can supply, through the liberal application of a large and beneficent endowment if the undergraduate student of this university cannot make a man of himself here, it will be in vain for him to go elsewhere for his making. It is easy, and often useful, to criticise the distribution of studies in every 230 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. institution ; and I believe there is no institution in which it is not habitually done, fairly or unfairly, as the case may be. But " dogmatic opinion " is as much out of place in such matters as in politics. It would be strange, indeed, if a new institution like this scarce seven years old were already so perfect in its entire organization as to be beyond criticism or improvement. It invites fair criticism it hesitates at no change which brings improvement. For my own part, I cannot too heartily applaud the skill with which its under- graduate courses are distributed and the theory of their dis- tribution recognizing the eclectic principle, upon the one hand, by conceding the choice of studies, and yet preventing its abuse, by grouping the studies for selection. And then, above all, stands the university itself, beckoning the under- graduate on to its opportunities, advantages and honors. There he sees about him men of culture and enthusiasm, the graduates of other institutions, who have come to drink at the fountains which will flow for him also. All around him is labor, opportunity, life, progress and achievement. There is no such thing as standing still. The year-books of scientific research and discovery are filled with the results of what is going on around him. The men who lead and direct it, and they who come from a distance to help it on, are, many of them, world-famous most of them becoming and worthy to become so. It seems to me that in all this there is everything to kindle the ambition and pride of the student, awaken his enthusiasm, and develop his powers. I can well understand that young gentlemen may sometimes prefer to have their powers develop, in their own way, at a distance from home and its restraints ; and that what is called THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 231 " college life " has attractions for some, which may outshine the allurements and opportunities of scholarship. But I can- not understand how it is that parents can take that view of the subject, or can believe that the shelter of the parental roof and the present watchfulness of parental solicitude and affection can diminish the value of the education which comes to their doors. Indeed, in the very many cases in which the question of education is, more or less, a question of cost to the parent, and he is forced or chooses to deal with it upon " commercial principles," it seems to me that he overlooks the first rule of "business," when he sends abroad for what he can procure, at least as good, on better terms, at home. But, quite apart from these considerations, and worthy to be taken into account with the best of them, are the relation which this university bears, and is destined to bear, to our city and the State of Maryland, and the obligations which are incident to that relation. A man of large fortune, under the impulse of large and benevolent ideas, thought proper, at his death, to dedicate an ample portion of that fortune to the endowment of a great university among us bearing his name. It was the deliberate purpose of his life, and he selected, with deliberation and wise foresight, the agents and agencies for its consummation. To the best of their ability these trusted agents have done the work assigned to them, and no differ- ences of opinion, upon other questions, can justify a doubt that they have done it, thus far, well. That this university, in its infancy, is already a noble monument to its Founder is, I repeat, a fact indisputable to all who are even super- ficially familiar with the records of scientific and educational opinion, at home and abroad. What it is, in itself and as a 232 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. monument, it is to us and ours as it is to him. It should be our pride, as it is his glory. Day by day it is growing in every element of usefulness, and in every force that can work for good. All the seeds of development are germinating and quick within it. It is not here for to-day or to-morrow, for this year or the next, but for all time a possession forever, so far as human things may be. Its Founder has done his part. His trusted agents have done theirs. It is for the people at whose feet the offering is laid to do their part like- wise. Theirs must be a living and active part, too, or it will be vain and fruitless. Neither sympathy, nor sentiment, nor admiration, nor praise, will suffice. You had as w r ell think of speeding a ship upon her voyage by wishing that the winds may blow after the manner of the third ode of Horace. What the university needs, to make the most of itself what the community needs, to make to itself anything of the uni- versity is downright, actual, daily co-operation on the part of our people. They must realize to themselves what such an institution is worth, and can be made worth, to them and their posterity. They must think of it growing with their growth, exploring and developing their physical resources, enlarging their minds, expanding and refining their culture and their tastes, bringing home to them and naturalizing every new discovery and application of science elsewhere, and, domi- ciliating, as it were, among them, every fresh discovery and application of its own. They must appreciate its value, intel- lectually and socially, as a centre of thought the resort of students and men of learning from a distance all seeking its advantages and all bringing something in exchange for what they seek. Even to-day, there is hardly a field of current THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 233 thought into which it has not already invited us to enter, under the guidance of men who are, themselves, among the leaders of thought in the world. And what are we to do with all this benefaction ? Are we to stand and look at the university, afar off and far below, as men stand in a valley or a gorge and gaze at a castle on a hill ? You will remem- ber a score of Dore's pictures, which will tell you what I mean the vivid light, above, on tower and keep, the dark- ness tangible beneath. Not so, I trust. I can imagine the stir, some morning, if the rumor were to run and to be true, that some galleon of the olden times such as the English buccaneers (known historically, by the by, as the "great navigators") were in the habit of plundering on their way from Mexico to Spain were anchored in our harbor, with her cargo of ingots of silver generously placed at the service of our citizens. I think one might venture to say that the significance of such a phenomenon would be promptly and generally comprehended in all its practical aspects that the officers and even the crew of that welcome vessel would be borne in triumph to Druid Hill Park and Bayview, and all places of municipal attraction and delight, upon the footing of the most favored visitors, in the most gorgeous convey- ances which could be provided by a liberal committee of our hospitable City Council. In regard to taking advantage of the godsend, I think probably the only question would be as to who should get the most of it. The cases of indiffer- ence or self-denial would hardly be numerous enough to be embarrassing. Yet many a galleon went to sea, in those old days, with less of actual counted treasure in her hold, than here, in money value, we have taken under the endowment 30 234 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. of Johns Hopkins. Instead of tossing it into the air, in the shape of riches which make themselves wings and fly, he has planted it deep in our soil, so that it shall take root and grow. And can any one venture to compare the worth of his bene- faction, if he had scattered it in present, actual largess to our people so that some of it should go into every man's purse with its value, as he chose to make it, to us and our posterity ? Think of the actual, material money value the material, tangible, yearly product to a community, of suc- cessive and growing generations of educated men, carrying with them into every profession and every department of busy and social life, the knowledge which fertilizes every field, and fructifies every industry, and makes right hands of all the hands of enterprise. Counted by dollars and cents tested by no book but the ledger the actual wealth exceeds, a thousand-fold, to say the least of it, what would have come to us, if the money had been piled in one of our squares and been distributed to all comers, per capita, by the police. I put it in this purely economical and homely way, not to belittle the subject, nor by way of insinuating that our people are incapable of comprehending it in its proper statement and its loftier and nobler aspects. I only desire to illustrate what I mean, by showing, that if they were thoroughly and fully to realize the value of this foundation in all points of view, as they do realize, at sight, the value of present gold, or of the venture or the speculation to which they see, or think they see, a golden lining, there would be no need of urging their co-operation to knit this university with their proudest hopes and most active struggles for the prosperous future of their city and their State. THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 235 A candid man must recognize, of course, that such co-opera- tion, in a full and deep sense of its necessity and of the good that must come from it, cannot spring up, all at once, in a community whose citizens, for generations, have been accus- tomed to dispense too much with higher education and to look for what they have had of it to institutions at a distance. Habit and fashion are powerful and slow to change, in this as in things of lesser moment. A commer- cial city, which has been built up entirely by trade and its enterprises, cannot take in, upon short notice, all that is meant by its becoming, for the future, a university town, as well. As the feudal town grew up around the castle that protected it, and the university town of old around its university, so the town of commerce has its own special centres, and with difficulty shapes itself around any others. I know that I am treading, with unaccustomed feet, a path which is especially familiar to the students of institutional his- tory around me ; and, having been misled, in early life by what I took to be the high historical authority of Diedrich Knickerbocker into the faith (pace Dr. Adams and Dr. Freeman) that an American town, in its origin, is "the accidental assemblage of a church, a tavern and a black- smith's shop," it is possible that I may carry my idea of the original nucleus and its influence perhaps too far. But Baltimore, I am persuaded, as a matter of fact, has grown, rather than been added to or altered ; and, in the main, is the same Baltimore as always, only richer, stronger, older, more mature. Its social traits and habits, the tone and temper, the manners and manhood of its people are, for the most part and happily, but little changed. It has the 236 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, right to be proud of them, and, speaking for myself as for the rest, I confess that it is quite as proud of them as it has the right to be. It is full of enterprise, in its way, and yet it clings, with unaltered devotion, to many of the traditional clogs to enterprise. It is fond of being what is called " conservative " often forgetting Carlyle's maxim that the value of conservatism depends upon the value of the things conserved. It aspires to be a metropolis, and it ought to be and will be, though it is not yet ; but it will become, rather than make itself such. Thus far, it has not entirely outgrown the retail idea, that the judicious advertising of a thing, as a fact, will save the necessity of its being or becom- ing one. Can I say anything stronger as to our neglect of home opportunities, than that we have been practising vivi- section upon the oyster, for an hundred and fifty years, without knowing, until told by Dr. Brooks, of the domestic affections of that cherished mollusk, or the conditions upon which alone its days may be long in the water. We may look at any time, I fear, for some equally humiliating dis- closure of our want of physiological acquaintance with the diamond-back terrapin ; although a mummy of that sacred reptile will be found, I am sure, in the sarcophagus of the prehistoric Marylander, should such ever be discovered. But pardon this trifling, for one must not dwell too seri- ously upon the shortcomings of a community which he cherishes and whose faults he shares, although he cannot, as a man, be silent, in regard to them, when it is proper he should speak. Nor is it a safe thing always to be too plain- spoken on such matters. Of this, a conspicuous proof recurs to my memory. The late Mr. John P. Kennedy, well known THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 237 in the literature of American fiction, and one of the most grace- ful and accomplished writers and gentlemen of his day, was rash enough to say, upon some public occasion, in his early manhood, that this community of ours was " not a reading community." Unhappily, at that time, what he said was true, which was so much the worse for it and for him. It so happened, in the course of things, that he afterwards aspired to public life, for which his talents and acquire- ments eminently fitted him. He was successful, more than once, in his ambition, but always under difficulties ; and I do not remember a single canvass in which his name was presented, where that unhappy speech of his did not cling to him like the albatross to the Ancient Mariner. More than once I have myself heard it called up in judgment against him on the hustings ; and I can testify to the lively indignation with which it was received, especially by that por- tion of the lieges who might most readily have been excused from reading, for the reason that they did not know how. But badinage aside this community has reached a stage of its progress, when it could no longer have any excuse, if it sought one, for being narrow-minded or provincial, or reckless of its opportunities. If it has not yet fully availed itself of these, so far as concerns the university, it is because they have not been long enough afforded to be familiar or thoroughly comprehended ; because the old paths have not been long enough opened and extended in the direction of the new ways. But the future relations of the State and the university are covered by a simple and single statement. The university is here, and here it will remain. If the people whose homes are around it should not appreciate or covet 238 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, the gifts which it offers them, the people who do appreciate and do covet them will still come from other homes and seek them. There is no fear that the numbers of these will decrease, or that a noble foundation like this will cry aloud in the wilderness and no man hearken to it. For the mere diffusion of knowledge among mankind if that were all it will matter little from what distance or from what quarter of the world the lamps are brought here to be filled and lighted. But, to us, it matters much whether or not we shall play the part of the foolish virgins. It was not merely for the general diffusion of knowledge that the university was endowed. Next the heart of its Founder was the prime and cherished desire, that the people among whom his wealth had been gathered, his friendships formed and the best years of his life usefully spent, should drink, first and chiefly, of the cup which he filled for posterity. It was not in his mind that they would turn from it or dash it from their lips. Nor, in what I have taken occasion here to say, nor from the earnestness with which it has been said, am I to be understood as anticipating or deeming it necessary to depre- cate so pessimistic a result. Slowly, but with regular and certain progress, the interest of our people in this institution has been developing itself year after year. The increasing list of its undergraduate students discloses the significant and hopeful fact, that they are the sons of parents in all callings and all classes of life, and, in a large degree, of those who are most capable of passing an intelligent and, indeed, authorita- tive judgment upon the merit of educational systems and methods. That the influence of such approval and sympa- thy will diffuse itself, widely and certainly, in the course THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 239 of time, it would be unreasonable to doubt. What I would impress upon our citizens if my voice were worthy to be heard is their waste of present time and opportunity in \vaiting ; the loss, to the institution itself, of that imme- diate and happy impulse which would quicken it, if its halls were thronged with the ambitious youth and promise of Maryland, and the sympathy of her people were concen- trated there, upon the labors and struggles and aspirations of their children. This is what I mean by the sympathy which I would venture to bespeak the only sympathy which is practical and worth having. The longer it is delayed, the longer the usefulness of the institution will lack development for local good the longer, of course, the postponement of that good, for those who will sit upon the banks and see the stream go by. In what has been said it has, of course, been understood that I have spoken as a citizen only, and in the interest of the community to which I belong. For the university, except in so far as it and the community are one in interest and in respect and duty to the Founder, I have no claim and could not presume to speak. But, having always taken the deepest interest in questions of public education, and having keenly felt, as well as constantly observed, in a long profes- sional life, the need of more precise and accurate and full instruction, and especially scientific instruction, even among those whose educational opportunities have been best, I con- fess to a more than common solicitude for the speedy identi- fication of this university with the intellectual development and progress of our people. Without undervaluing, for example, the facility with which an alert and well-trained 240 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. intellect, in my profession, may for the moment appropriate to itself enough of special scientific knowledge for the occa- sional needs of the trial-table and the examination of experts, and may use that knowledge with efficiency and force, I can- not but recognize it as akin to the painful cramming by which young gentlemen sometimes substitute their memory for their intelligence, when examinations are hovering in the air. And it is a dreary thing, at the best, for a man to be prosecuting scientific inquiry in public, under the primary and difficult condition of not going beyond his own depth. I fancy that the embarrassment must be equally serious to the medical man and the Biblical student and teacher, when, to use a railway phrase, they are compelled to take in scientific fuel at all the way-stations. Perhaps, though I hardly venture to suggest it, they may share a certain relief, in the presence of their patients and hearers, which we have, in our way, at the bar. I mean the confidence that if counsel happen to know little of science, the jury probably know less. And here it is worth while to say what I know to be true, from considerable opportunity of knowing that the public would be startled, if they could realize the extent and depth of the ignorance of ordinary rudimental scientific principle and fact, upon the part of the great mass of those who are entrusted with the daily practical application of the mightiest and most dangerous mechanical forces. I remember well the testimony of an engineman, who was produced as an expert in a case arising out of a disastrous boiler explosion, and who affirmed his superior right to testify, by deposing, with some defiance, that he did not think any one knew anything about such matters, " except a man who had been brought up in a boiler- THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 241 room." He ascribed the particular explosion to "the gases in the boiler," and when asked what gases he meant, he replied, with an air of triumph, " How can I tell ? I was not inside the boiler." From that day's experience to the present, I have never ceased to regard, as one of the greatest needs of our State and city and one of the richest boons that could be vouchsafed to them, the establishment of technical schools, with all the shops, appliances and apparatus for thorough, scientific, mechanical instruction. Nor will I abandon the hope that some man or men, of large wealth and largeness of view, like Stevens of Hoboken, will before long earn the lasting gratitude of this community, and, espe- cially, of its men of toil, by affiliating some such institution with the Hopkins foundation. And this leads me to one other cognate topic, which I should not impose upon your patience, but for its important bearing upon some of the considerations which have already been presented. All that is in it is obvious enough, to any one who reflects ; and it is worth touching, only because the most intelligent people, when otherwise preoccupied, do not always stop for reflection. I refer to the truth so per- petually illustrated by experience that to the attainment of knowledge, and especially of scientific knowledge, it is almost as essential that it should be pursued under proper guidance as that it should be pursued at all. To the gener- ality of this observation there are, of course, exceptions, and none so conspicuous as the few in which real genius is its own inspiration. But the self-made man, for the most part, is a very imperfect manufacture, and his leading characteristic is apt to be as was cruelly but most cleverly said of the late 31 242 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. Mr. Horace Greeley, when he boasted of his self-making that " he worships his creator." Of course, if he has merit and has had no choice but to make himself, it is impossible not to commend his efforts; and it is but just to make allow- ances for his mistakes, while we regret the cause and provide against its recurrence. Voltaire has said, in his rather com- pendious way, that " the beginning of wisdom is to know how to doubt." It might be said, I think, with less question, that the beginning of knowledge is to know how to begin. It is very confusing to the mind to start from the wrong end ; and walking backwards is as helpless a process intellectually as physically. You will permit an illustration which I flatter myself that your philological classes at least will appreciate, even if you deem it a little remote. At a meeting of the British Association, in October, 1862, the contemporary report of proceedings in the London Athenaeum will show that the Rev. Dr. Mill read a very long and learned paper concerning the "decipherment of the Phoenician inscription on the Newton stone, Aberdeenshire." Having decided that the letters were Phoenician, the reverend gentleman read the inscription backwards, from the right, explaining it by corre- sponding letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He thus made it out to be a votive monument, dedicated to Eshmiu, God of Health (the Tyrian Esculapius), in gratitude for favors received during " the wandering exile of me thy servant " the dedicator being " Han Thanit Zenaniah, magistrate, who is saturated with sorrow." On its face, the mode of decipherment had some signs of weakness to even a super- ficial critic; and the conclusion of the inscription was rather illogical, at least according to modern experience, in which a THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. 243 saturation of sorrow does not usually crystallize, for a sick man, into a monument of gratitude to his physician. Dr. Mill, however, discussed the sufferings of Han Thanit at some length, speculating upon their cause (which, I have no doubt, was " malaria ") and suggesting that he appeared to have been a man of consular authority, who had com- manded a fleet or ship, which had come to Britain ; and that this and other circumstances pointed to the earlier period of the history of Tyre. Dr. Mill was followed by a certain Mr. Wright obvi- ously an iconoclast of fiendish malignity who said, in a quiet way, that the stone belonged to a familiar class of monuments. The inscription was written, he said, not in Phreniciau, but in rudely-formed Roman characters, and belonged to a period subsequent to the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain. It was not easy to decipher it, he said, without some study, and the drawing presented was imperfect, but he thought he could sufficiently explain what it was, and he read it thus, beginning at the left : " Hie jacit (jaceC) Constantinus filins * * * *" followed by other letters easy to make out on careful examination. It was simply the burial stone, he added, of some chieftain called Coustantine, and bore his name and that of his father. It was to be lamented, said Mr. Wright, that Dr. Mill had thrown away so much learning so mistakenly. I have ventured to give this remarkable statement in almost literal detail, because, apart from its point as an illustration, it seems to me almost as humorous in its way, and as delight- fully circumstantial in its humor, as if Swift himself had invented it. In my limited reading, I do not remember to 244 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. have met a thoroughly authentic report of any like occurrence in a learned society. Doubtless, many a Han Thanit may have been accredited to Tyre, and never found out to be a Roman ; but, if the incident which I have described is at all characteristic of the proceedings of the British Association, there may well be said of it, what Lord John Townshend said of the House of Commons, when the celebrated gram- marian, James Harris, the author of " Hermes," was taking the oaths of office. You will doubtless recall the story. " Who might that be ? " said Lord John. Some one replied that it was Mr. Harris, " who had written on grammar and harmony." " Then, why the deuce," cried Lord John, " does he come to this place, where he will hear so little of either ? " From this illustration of what learning comes to, when it begins at the wrong end, we may well point the moral of what ignorance or half learning will end in, if it undertakes to be its own guide in research. The desire to know being the parent of all knowledge, men constantly persuade them- selves that such desire and the willingness to work are all that is necessary for the attainment of their object. How many industrious and worthy lives are comparatively wasted under that mistake in squaring the circle, or such like it is difficult to estimate. Undoubtedly, the man who looks at the sun through a smoked glass, may have as ardent a desire to understand the phenomenon which his rude instrument discloses, as the astronomer who sails his thousands of miles, to plant his telescope on some wild mountain, or some lone island in mid-ocean. But not all the enthusiasm which ever lifted a man's face towards the heavens will teach him even "the sweet influences of the Pleiades," or make him know THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSI1Y. 245 that " the bands of Orion " cannot be loosed. The Chaldsean system of instruction through the sheepfold has gone out of vogue, and the moon of our nights comes down to Endymion only through the lenses. The sum and substance of all sci- ence is fact; and the student, who does not know what research has already disclosed, cannot possibly know where the research of to-morrow should begin. His danger, if ill-directed or without direction, will always be, that he will soon forget the stake in the excitement or amusement of the game, and ultimately subordinate finding to seeking. It will be the familiar case of the collector, who begins with a taste or a love for pictures, or prints, or books, and ends with the uncontrollable and fruitless passion for mere collecting. To prevent the waste and abuse of intellect and effort, the abor- tive struggle, the disappointment and defeat which come from imperfect teaching and the self-sufficient helplessness of undis- ciplined thought, is the high and special function of such educational authority as only a great university can wield. Wherefore, over and above the tending of its own fold, I find especial reason for rejoicing in the standards and methods which this university will establish and maintain among us, and in all our institutions of learning, by the authority of its example and position, and by the sheer and downright force of its intellectual preponderance. And when I speak of pre- ponderance, it is of a superiority, not vaunted but frankly and generously recognized an authority not less efficient, because founded on good feeling and respect, and exhibited in co-opera- tion rather than control. [Addressing Judge Dobbin.] To you and me, Mr. Presi- dent of the Board of Trustees, and to some of your co-workers, 246 THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. these things of even the near future, though visible enough and bright, have something of the light which comes to men, at evening, from beyond the sensible horizon where the earth-line fades. There is, perhaps, in this, some touch of sadness, but least of all, to one, like you, sir, who having filled to the brim the measure of official usefulness and honor, can still give to this great work and to the service of the people who cherish you, the wisdom of age, the tempered zeal of robust and high convictions, and the vigor of facul- ties unimpaired. NOTES. PAGE 5. When this address was printed for private circulation in 1867, it was prefaced by the following note : The Essay which follows was written for the Mercantile Library Association of Baltimore, before which it was read in the Spring of 1859. Since the edition published by the Association was exhausted, I have been repeatedly called upon for copies. These requests, to my surprise, have been especially frequent of late, and have been most kindly urged, by gentlemen of intelligence, in various parts of the country. I have been led to believe, under the circumstances, that the reproduction of the Essay may possibly lead to good, and I have therefore printed it anew for private distribution. The last few years have afforded many illustrations, by which sad and effective point could be added to the views which I have endeavored to enforce. They have likewise hastened, so precipi- tately, the ordinary march of events, that I have been tempted to remodel some things which now seem as if they had been written half a century ago. But, on the whole, I have thought it wiser to leave the text as it first appeared, with a few, simply verbal, alterations. S. T. WALLIS. BALTIMORE, June, 1867. PAGE 52, LINE 7. Professor Nathan R. Smith [s. T. w.]. 247 248 NOTES. PAGE 65. At a Meeting of the Trustees of the Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore, held on the 6th of November, 1869, the fol- lowing Preamble and Resolutions were adopted : WHEREAS, The telegraph brought to us yesterday morning the sad tid- ings that our good friend and patron, George Peabody, died the night before at eleven o'clock on Thursday, the 4th of November, in London where he had recently arrived from a visit to this country, the Trustees of the Institute have been convened to take a record of this event, and to direct such proceedings as shall properly express the profound sorrow which it inspires, and render suitable honor to the memory of the illus- trious founder of the corporation that has been committed to their charge. Therefore Resolved, That in the death of George Peabody the civilized world has lost one of its most generous benefactors, his country an illustrious citizen whose active benevolence will long be remembered in the wise and noble institutions which he has planned and founded for the good of the nations, and his numerous friends on both sides of the Atlantic a most cherished companion, whose life has been illustrated and adorned by the constant prac- tice of the most conspicuous probity, charity and good will to mankind. Resolved, That this Board have received the intelligence of his death with an emotion rendered more poignant by their experience of the bene- fits they have enjoyed, in their peculiar personal relations to him, as a friend in whose intercourse they were accustomed to find a kindly and eS'ective co-operation in the performance of the duties assigned to them, and the most valuable aid, both in council and resources, for the advance- ment of the design of the Institute. Resolved, That in token of respect for his memory the Institute be closed until Monday, and that it be suitably draped with badges of mourning, to be retained one month. Resolved, That the Board make provision for a suitable eulogy on the life and character of the deceased, to be pronounced in the Hall of the Institute at a day hereafter to be determined, of which notice shall be given to the public. Resolved, That S. Teackle Wallis, Esq., be invited to deliver the eulogy on the life and character of Mr. Peabody provided for in the foregoing resolution. NOTES. 249 Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed by the Chair to carry the above resolutions into effect, and that they be also authorized to co-operate with any public bodies, in the city or State, who may desire to unite with the Trustees of the Peabody Institute in paying a proper tribute of respect to the memory of the late George Peabody. On the 15th of February, 1870, among the proceedings of the House of Delegates of Maryland, was the following : Mr. Hammond submitted the following message : BY THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES, February 16, 1870. Gentlemen of the Senate : We propose, with the concurrence of your Honorable Body, the appoint- ment of a Committee, consisting of three on the part of this House, and two on the part of the Senate, to invite the Hon. S. Teackle Wallis to repeat his Eulogy on the Life and Character of George Peabody, in the Hall of the House of Delegates, before the Governor, Court of Appeals, and General Assembly of Maryland, at such time as he shall be pleased to designate. We have appointed, on the part of the House, Messrs. Ham- mond, Kilbourn and Streett. By order, MILTON Y. KIDD, Ch iff Clerk. Which was read, assented to, and sent to the Senate. In the Senate, on the same day, Mr. Earle submitted the following message, which was read, assented to, and sent to the House of Delegates : BY THE SENATE, February 16, 1870. Gentlemen of the House of Delegates: We have received your message proposing the appointment of a Com- mittee, consisting of three on the part of the House, and two on the part of the Senate, to invite the Hon. S. Teackle Wallis to repeat his Eulogy on the Life and Character of George Peabody, in the Hall of the House of Delegates, before the Governor, Court of Appeals, and General Assembly of Maryland, at such time as he shall be pleased to designate, and heartily concur therein. We have appointed, on the part of the Senate, Messrs. Earle and Hyland. By order, AUGUSTUS GASSAWAY, Secretary. 32 250 NOTES. In response to this invitation, communicated to Mr. Wallis by the Joint Committee, the discourse, originally delivered in the City of Baltimore on the 18th of February, 1870, was repeated by him on February 25th, in the Hall of the House of Delegates, at Annapolis, before the Senate and House in joint Session, in the presence of His Excellency the Governor of the State, the Honorable Judges of the Court of Appeals, the Officers of Her Britannic Majesty's Ship Monarch (then lying in Annapolis Roads), and a number of ladies and gentlemen specially invited. On the 26th of February, Mr. Touchstone submitted, in the House of Delegates, the following resolutions which were unani- mously adopted, and which received, in due course, the unanimous concurrence of the Senate, viz : JOINT KESOLUTIONS. WHEREAS, the discourse upon the Life and Character of the late George Peabody, which was yesterday pronounced by 8. Teackle Wallis, Esq., in the presence of the Senate and House of Delegates of Maryland, is, by its just discrimination, its instructive and philosophical analysis of character, and its lofty eloquence, entitled to rank amongst the most distinguished orations of modern times, and ought, therefore, to be perpetuated and handed down to posterity, with the other tributes paid by Maryland to the memory of its immortal subject, Therefore, Resolved by the Senate and House of Delegates of Maryland, That the thanks of the two Houses are hereby offered to Mr. Wallis, for his prompt accept- ance of their invitation, and that he be requested to furnish a copy of his discourse for publication. Resolved, That 2,000 copies of the said discourse be printed for the use of the General Assembly. The following correspondence thereupon ensued : GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF MARYLAND, SENATE, ANNAPOLIS, March 3d, 1870. Dear Sir : We beg to enclose the joint resolutions of the General Assem- bly of Maryland, asking a copy of your classic and eloquent Eulogy on the Life and Character of George Peabody, for publication. Having been NOTES. 251 appointed a Committee to execute the wishes of the Legislature, we express the hope that it may be agreeable to your views to comply with this request. We have the honor to be, very respectfully, your ob't serv'ts, ORMOND HAMMOND, JAMES T. EARLE, E. G. KILBOUKN, C. H. HYLAND, J. M. STREETT, Of the Senate. Of the House. HON. S. TEACKLE WALLIS. BALTIMORE, March 4th, 1870. Gentlemen: I have before me your flattering communication of yester- day's date, enclosing me a copy of the resolutions which the General Assembly of Maryland has been pleased to adopt, in reference to my recent discourse upon the Life and Character of the late Mr. Penbody. The terms in which the General Assembly has seen fit to characterize the discourse so far transcend my own estimate of its possible merits, that I should have much hesitation, under other circumstances, in submitting it to the deliberate criticism of the public. But the manuscript is already in the hands of the Committee of the Peabody Institute, for publication, and I shall therefore take great pleasure in transmitting you the corrected proofs as soon as they are ready. Let me l>eg you to express to the General Assembly, in the warmest way, my very grateful sense, not only of the high honor done me by its official proceedings, but of the great personal consideration, courtesy and kindness, which have left me under so many obligations to the officers, Committees and Members of both Houses. I have the honor to be, with great regard, truly yours, S. T. WALLIS. HON. JAMES T. EARLE, HON. ORMOND HAMMOND, " C. H. HYLAND, " E. G. KILBOURN, Committee of the Senate. " J. M. STREETT, Committee of the House of Delegates. PAGE 141. The ceremonies attendant upon the unveiling of the Statue erected by the State of Maryland, in honor of the late Chief Justice ROGER BROOKE TANEY, took place in the Senate Cham- ber, at Annapolis, at noon of December 10th, 1872. The Report and Address of the Committee were read by the chairman, Mr. 252 NOTES. S. T. Wallis, who in their name made formal delivery of the Monu- ment to the Governor of the State. His Excellency, Governor Whyte, responded briefly, and when he had concluded, the com- pany proceeded to the grounds in front of the State House, where, upon the order of the Governor, the statue was uncovered. During the ceremony in the Chamber, the Governor occupied the place of the President of the Senate, the Judges of the Court of Appeals, with other prominent representatives of the Bench and Bar of the State, being upon one side, and the Officers of the Naval Academy, in full uniform, with Rear Admiral Worden at their head, being seated on the other. His Excellency remained standing during the delivery of Mr. Wallis' address. PAGE 169. BALTIMORE, June 7th, 1881. Hon. S. TEACKLE WALLIS. My Dear Sir: Permit me to inform you that the Board of Managers of the Maryland Institute passed on the 6th of June a resolution in which the Chairman of the Schools of Art and Design was requested to obtain from you, for publication, a copy of the speech made by you on the 4th of June at the Annual Commencement of said Schools. As I hope that your very able and eloquent address upon that occasion may stimulate some of our fellow-citizens to reflect upon, if not to follow, the philanthropic suggestions contained in it, you will, by a compliance with the desire of the Institute for its publication, much oblige, Yours, very truly, CARROLL SPENCE. BALTIMORE, June 7th, 1881. Hon. CARROLL SPENCE, Chairman, &c. My Dear Sir: In response to your letter of this morning, I have the pleasure to send you, with this, a copy of my address, delivered at your Annual Commencement, on the 4th of June. I appreciate the compliment conveyed by the resolution of the Board, and shall be happy, if I have been able to promote the interests of the Institute, or attract the attention of the public to its claims upon their sympathy and support. Very truly yours, S. T. WALLIS. POEMS. POEMS. THE BLESSED HAND. For you and me, who love the light Of God's uncloistered day, It were, indeed, a dreary lot, To shut ourselves away From every glad and sunny thing And pleasant sight and sound, And pass, from out a silent cell, Into the silent ground. Not so the good monk, Anselm, thought, For, in his cloister's shade, The cheerful faith that lit his heart Its own sweet sunshine made ; And in its glow he prayed and wrote, From matin-song till even, And trusted, in the Book of Life, To read his name in Heaven. 255 256 POEMS. What holy books his gentle art Filled full of saintly lore ! What pages, brightened by his hand, The splendid missals bore ! What blossoms, almost fragrant, twined Around each blessed name, And how his Saviour's cross and crown Shone out, from cloud and flame ! But, unto clerk as unto clown, One summons comes, alway, And Brother Anselm heard the call, At vesper-chime, one day. His busy pen was in his hand, His parchment by his side He bent him o'er the half-writ prayer, Kissed Jesu's name, and died ! They laid him where a window's blaze Flashed o'er the graven stone, And seemed to touch his simple name With pencil like his own ; And there he slept, and, one by one, His brethren died the while, And trooping years went by and trod His name from off the aisle. And lifting up the pavement, then, An Abbot's couch to spread, They let the jewelled sunlight in Where once lay Anselm's head. POEMS. 257 No crumbling bone was there, no trace Of human dust that told, But, all alone, a warm right hand Lay, fresh, upon the mould. It was not stiff, as dead men's are, But, with a tender clasp, It seemed to hold an unseen hand Within its living grasp ; And ere the trembling monks could turn To hide their dazzled eyes, It rose, as with a sound of wings, Right up into the skies ! Oh loving, open hands, that give ; Soft hands, the tear that dry ; Oh patient hands, that toil to bless ; How can ye ever die ! Ten thousand vows from yearning hearts To Heaven's own gates shall soar, And bear you up, as Ansel rn's hand Those unseen angels bore ! Kind hands ! oh never near to you May come the woes ye heal ! Oh never may the hearts ye guard The griefs ye comfort, feel ! May He, in whose sweet name ye build, So crown the work ye rear, That ye may never clasped be, In one unanswered prayer ! 258 POEMS. A PRAYER FOR PEACE. Peace ! Peace ! God of our fathers, grant us Peace ! Unto our cry of anguish and despair Give ear and pity ! From the lonely homes Where widowed beggary and orphaned woe Fill their poor urns with tears ; from trampled plains Where the brightest harvest Thou hast sent us, rots, The blood of them who should have garnered it Calling to Thee from fields of carnage, where The foul-beaked vultures, sated, flap their wings O'er crowded corpses, that but yesterday Bore hearts of brothers, beating high with love And common hopes and pride, all blasted now ; Father of Mercies ! not alone from these Our prayer and wail are lifted. Not alone Upon the battle's seared and desolate track, Nor with the sword and flame, is it, O God, That Thou hast smitten us. Around our hearths, And in the crowded streets and busy marts, Where echo whispers not the far-off strife That slays our loved ones ; in the solemn halls Of safe and quiet counsel nay, beneath The temple-roofs that we have reared to Thee, And mid their rising incense, God of Peace ! The curse of war is on us. Greed and hate Hungering for gold and blood : Ambition, bred POEMS. 259 Of passionate vanity and sordid lusts, Mad with the base desire of tyrannous sway Over men's souls and thoughts, have set their price On human hecatombs, and sell and buy Their sons and brothers for the shambles. Priests, With white, anointed, supplicating hands, From Sabbath unto Sabbath clasped to Thee, Burn, in their tingling pulses, to fling down Thy censers and thy cross, to clutch the throats Of kinsmen by whose cradles they were born, Or grasp the brand of Herod, and go forth Till Rachel hath no children left to slay. The very name of Jesus, writ upon Thy shrines, beneath the spotless, outstretched wings Of Thine Almighty Dove, is wrapt and hid With bloody battle-flags, and from the spires That rise above them, angry banners flout The skies to which they point, amid the clang Of rolling war-songs tuned to mock Thy praise. All things once prized and honored are forgot. The Freedom that we worshipped, next to Thee, The manhood that was Freedom's spear and shield, The proud, true heart, the brave, outspoken word, Which might be stifled, but could never wear The guise, whate'er the profit, of a lie ; All these are gone, and in their stead, have come The vices of the miser and the slave, Scorning no shame that bringeth gold or power, Knowing no love, or faith, or reverence, 260 POEMS. Or sympathy, or tie, or aim, or hope, Save as begun in self, and ending there. With vipers like to these, O blessed God ! Scourge us no longer ! Send us down, once more, Some shining seraph in Thy glory clad, To wake the midnight of our sorrowing With tidings of Good Will and Peace to men ; And if the star that through the darkness led Earth's wisdom then, guide not our folly now, Oh, be the lightning Thine Evangelist, With all its fiery, forked tongues, to speak The unanswerable message of Thy will. Peace ! Peace ! God of our fathers, grant us Peace ! Peace in our hearts and at Thine altars ; Peace On the red waters and their blighted shores ; Peace for the leaguered cities, and the hosts That watch and bleed, around them and within ; Peace for the homeless and the fatherless ; Peace for the captive on his weary way, And the mad crowds who jeer his helplessness. For them that suffer, them that do the wrong ; Sinning and sinned against O God ! for all For a distracted, torn, and bleeding land Speed the glad tidings ! Give us, give us Peace ! POEMS. 261 THE LAST OF THE HOURS. Daughter of light ! thy gaze, methinks, is sad ; Thy hooded vesture hath no bloom of flowers Why, 'mid so blithe a host, art thoti not glad ? What grief hath stung thee, fairest of the Hours? Is it that Heaven's own children, when their lot Is bent to human circumstance, like thine, Share the near sorrows which themselves have not, And round the immortal brow earth's cypress twine ? When at the couch of pain the morning calls, Thou art the last to chase the fevered dream ; When welcome night upon the weary falls, Thine is the ling'ring, last, intrusive beam ! Of those that love and part, the vigils pale Are they not thine ? and thine the watcher's sigh, As, with wet eyes, she sees the misty sail Sink down, with thee, beneath the twilight sky ? Hast thou not seen nay see'st thou not, each day Youth, purity, and truth, and trust, depart Dreams vanish struggles ended hopes decay And change, cold as the grave, come o'er the heart ? Thou too art Death's own hour the dim, the dread In whose wan light his shadow creepeth o'er 34 262 POEMS. The opening, awful pathway we must tread, And the loved places we shall know no more. Yet not all sad thy round ! The passing bell Gives thee ofttimes sweet music as it rings There are deep joy-notes even in its knell, For sorrow dieth, like the brightest things ! The dew that at the haunted even-tide Thou weepest, as last mourner o'er the day, Last Hour of night ! are not its tear-drops dried, By the wild morning's first exultant ray ? Though thine the woe of partings, know'st thou not- Long absence over joy come home anew ? 'Mid hopes and dreams that leave us, why forgot Are anguish, doubt, despair, departed too ? And e'en when life goes wasting, with thy sands, And tears fall fast, and, in the noiseless tread, The quivering whisper, the cold clasped hands, And the wild prayer half madness may be read Our mortal story's ending even then How oft, last Hour, is there a light that springs Out of thy darkness, which the fears of men Can dim not nor o'ershadow but which flings A glory, brighter than the noon-day's, round The bed thou watehest, until grief and dread POEMS. 263 Blaze into triumph, and the trumpet's sound Swells high with welcome as it calls the dead ! Let then the daughter of old Chaos wear The robe of shadows and the mantled brow ! Unbind thy tresses to the rosy air, And to the Sun, with sunshine, answer Thou ! TRUTH AND REASON. How beautiful the fantasy That warmed the brain of him of old The watcher of the midnight sky Who, as the stars above him rolled, Untaught of dim Primeval Cause And crowned will and sceptred laws, Had glimpses of a spirit-baud, Careering through the trackless air, Each shaping, with a giant's hand The orbit of a blazing sphere ! A holier thought and not less bright It is, that o'er the sands of time, We walk not in the mystic light Of Providence, far off, sublime, Nor Fate, nor Chance, with baleful ray, Kindles the lode-star of our way ; 264 POEMS. But, that where'er our tents are cast, Each hath an Angel by his side, From the first life-sigh to the last, His guardian, champion, friend and guide. Such faith seems half idolatry To speculation's earth-turned eyes, But wo befall us, if we see No truth save that in reason's guise ! The simplest child, in sun and storm, Hath visions of God's awful form, That dazzled science could not paint ; And he, who bends to laws alone, May mock the worship of the saint, Yet kneel unto a graven stone ! The Heathen, when his fancy gave Their deities to all things fair Set Neptune's trident o'er the wave, And temples made of earth and air Had more of worship in his heart, More of religion's better part, Than he who dives in reason's well For all the truth to mortals given, And from its depths alone, will tell The starry mysteries of Heaven ! I would not, that the dreams of old Should veil again the wakened mind, Nor mine their faitli who idly hold That to be wise we need be blind ; POEMS. 265 But, when I sec how darkly lie The plainest things before mine eye, That, with each turn of reason's wheel, Falsehood and truth, both, upward go, I can but think that what I feel Is best and most of what I know ! BEAUTY AND FAITH. The Painter turned him to the sky, And, as he gazed, a cloud went by, Whose purple seemed to fold A vision, round whose golden hair The morning stars a glory were, And worshipped as they rolled. Beneath his flashing pencil then Grew forms of light, unknown to men, And lo ! the canvas gleams As if the Painter's hand had caught The vesture of a seraph's thought To robe immortal dreams ! Time hath not dimm'd them ! Pilgrims bow Before that dazzling beauty now As when, from opened heaven, Rapt genius snatched its kindling ray, 266 POEMS. And revelled in that glorious day To inspiration given ! But he, the Painter, did he kneel And in his own high phrensy feel The awful, present God ? Not so ! The shrine was poor and dim Where faith, not beauty, lit for him The path that angels trod ! Ah ! for ourselves indeed 'twere well, If Love were part of Fancy's spell, And all things bright were dear ; If we could bless as well as build, And Deity and worship filled What temples we might rear ! In vain our hands shall altars raise, Though meet they be for proudest praise, And genius grave the stone ; For howsoe'er the gods be shrined That lure the incense of the mind, The heart adores its own ! POEMS. 267 THE EXILE'S PRAYER. He speaks ! The lingering locks, that cold And few and gray, fall o'er his brow, Were bright, with childhood's clustered gold, When last that voice was heard as now. He speaks ! and as with flickering blaze Life's last dim embers, waning, burn, Fresh from the unsealed fount of praise, His childhood's gushing words return. Ah ! who can tell what visions roll Before those wet and clouded eyes, As, o'er the old man's parting soul, His childhood's wakened memories rise ! The fields are green and gladsome still, That smiled around his sinless home, And back, from ancient vale and hill, Exultant echoes bounding come ! He treads that soil, the first he pressed, He shouts with all his boyish glee, He rushes to his mother's breast, He clasps and climbs his father's knee ; And then the prayer that nightly rose, Warm from his lisping lips, of yore, Bursts forth, to bless that evening's close Whose slumbers earth shall break no more ! 268 POEMS. Dark though our brightest lot may be, From toil to sin and sorrow driven, Sweet childhood ! we have still, in thee, A link that holds us near to heaven ! When Mercy's errand angels bear, 'Tis in thy raiment that they shine, And if one voice reach Mercy's ear, That blessed voice is surely thine ! God of his fathers ! may the breath That upward wafts the exile's sigh, Rise, fragrant, from the lips of death, As the first prayer of infancy ! Frown not, if through his childhood, back, The old man heavenward seeks his way Thy light was on that morning track, It can but lead to Thee and day ! THE FIRST GRAVE. The city of the dead hath thrown wide its gates at last, And through the cold gray portal a funeral train hath passed One grave the first is open, and on its lonely bed, Some heir of sin and sorrow hath come to lay his head. Perchance a hero cometh, whose chaplet, in its bloom, Hath fallen from his helmet, to wither on his tomb : POEMS. 269 It may be that hot youth comes it may be, we behold Here, broken at the cistern, pale beauty's bowl of gold. Mayhap that manhood's struggle, despite of pride and power, Hath ended in the darkness and sadness of this hour : Perchance some white-haired pilgrim, with travel so re oppressed, Hath let his broken staff fall, and bent him down to rest. But stay ! behold the sepulchre nor age nor strength is there ; Nor fame, nor pride, nor manhood, those lagging mourners bear : A little child is with them, as pale and pure as snow, Her mother's tears not dried yet upon her gentle brow. The step that tottered, trembling, the heart that faltered, too, At the faintest sound of terror the infant spirit knew ; The eyes that glistened tearful when shadowy eve came on, Now show no dread of sleeping in darkness and alone. And why, though all be lonely, should that young spirit fear, Through midnight and through tempest, no shielding bosom near ? Ere the clod was on the coffin ere the spade had cleft the clod Bright angels clad an angel in the raiment of their God ! Green home of future thousands ! how blest in sight of heaven Are these, the tender firstlings, that death to thee has given ! Though prayer and solemn anthem have echoed from thy hill, This first fresh grave of childhood hath made thee holier still. 35 270 POEMS. The morning flowers that deck thee shall sweeter, lovelier, bloom Above the spot where beauty like theirs hath found a tomb ; And when the evening cometh, the very stars shall keep A vigil, as of seraphs, where innocence doth sleep. Sweet hope ! that when the slumbers of thy pilgrims shall be o'er, And the valley of death's shadow hath mystery no more, To them the trumpet's clangor may whisper accents mild, And bid them wear the garlands that crown this little child ! THE SPECTKE OF COLALTO. I. How many a gem hath Nature's hand Flung o'er Italia's fallen land ! How bright the world she bids to bloom Around old Empire's prostrate tomb ! Oh ! who, with patriot soul to dare, Could gaze upon a land so fair, Or list, as Nature's joy goes by From vocal wood and echoing sky, Or feel that yon ethereal dome Hangs, ever cloudless, o'er his home, And not with hand upon his sword, And " Rome and Brutus ! " for his word- POEMS. 271 Fling off the chain that galls him now, Bind once again about his brow The laurel of the glorious past, And, kneeling by some temple's wall, Whose heavenless gods for vengeance call, Swear that unyielding to the last He will not shame his father's grave, And live a Roman and a slave ! Alas ! Italia's brighter day, Her glory's noon, hath passed away, And, mindless of their country's wrong, Her sons, with love and dance and song. Now teach the stream of joy to swell From matin chime to vesper bell. But not upon their souls is thrown The blight of luxury alone, For there her throne hath falsehood made, There vengeance bares the bravo's blade, And men, for rights who dare not bleed, Lurk armed for murder's midnight deed. O They too, the daughters of that clime, How is their beauty linked with crime ! By passion's cunning taught to know Aifection's lightest ebb or flow ; Familiar with each jealous wile, Too prompt to seek for falsehood's guile, Too apt, from any doubts, to prove The frailty of the hearts they love, They pass o'er life, as o'er a sea Of bitterness and mockery ; 272 POEMS. Too ardent for a world like this, Too high in hope for earthly bliss ! Oh ! would ye know how dread the fate That drinks the venom of their hate, Go, hear it in the long wild cry That echoes round Colalto's towers ! Go, ask it of the moonless sky That on a woman's vengeance lowers ! Go, seek it where, from you gray wall, Now crumbles fast the stony pall Of one whom, to her living grave, Without a Christian rite to bless, A woman's vengeance madly gave, In her youth's prime and loveliness. Bethink ye, when each mould'ring bone Beneath your touch to dust hath gone, That she, whose wreck before you lies, Was radiant as her own bright skies In brow and cheek, and form and air As pure, as sunny, and as fair ! Methinks in yonder bower she stands, Her lady's tresses in her hands, And o'er her lips there plays the while A lucid and a happy smile A smile so fraught with peace and joy, By innocence so heavenly made, So free from grovelling earth's alloy, 'Twere mournful it should ever fade. Upon her face, with raptured mien, Colalto's lord is fondly seen POEMS. 273 To turn his eye's scarce smothered flame, While now and then, by stealth, there came A sigh which told how wild a guest Had made its homestead in his breast. The thoughts he dares not then to speak Are burning on his swarthy cheek, And on his lips, and o'er his brow, The smile, the flush, to fever grow ! Unconscious of his lawless gaze, With fairy hand she lightly plays Amid her lady's flowing hair, And smiling on, with that bright smile, She seems as if no dream of guile, No tainted thought, could enter there ! Alas ! across the mirror's face, Her lady's jaundiced sight may trace Where, true to life, reflected steals Each glance her lord too ill conceals ; And when she marks that maiden's eye, And lip, so full of ecstasy, Though bleeds her thrilling bosom, torn In turns, by fury, hate, and scorn, No word she speaks but, ere the night Hath half run o'er its dismal flight, In yon deep, torch-lit vault, they say, A deed is done which weary years Of madness and repentant tears Were all too few to cleanse away ! Why should we paint yon niche's shade The fainting form within it laid 274 POEMS. The hurried wall that o'er it rose The shriek that cursed its murderous close ? When morning dawned 'twas bright as e'er, But not amid the throng appear Those charms which erst were wont to glow So brightly in the pageant's show ; And, though they searched the castle o'er Though every tongue in sorrow spoke Since that unhallowed morning broke, The one they sought was found no more. II. What tyrant's hand, what stern array, Can bolt, or bar, or dungeon find To stay the soarings of the mind, E'en when begirt with chains of clay? Then, when the dust hath found its own, And, fetterless, the soul hath gone, Shall not its angel-pinions wave High o'er the darkness of the grave? And if there be some cherished scene Where deathless memory lingers yet Some spot which green and bright had been Before the sun of life had set; Or, if there be some withered spot Beyond the grave yet un forgot, Round which life's darker curtains hung, O'er which her cloud had passion flung, Then say why, after life's sad close, POEMS. 'lib May not the spirit circle o'er, As perfume haunts the faded rose, The realms it blessed or cursed before? Why when the noisy day hath past, And midnight's shades are round us cast, May not the soul delight to fling The shadow of its silver wing Around the mortal couch where those It loved in life's dark vale, repose? To heal the mourner's wounded breast, To soothe each waking grief to rest, Or robed in godlike justice, throw Its lightning on the guilty brow ? May not the spark that never dies Start from its ashes into flame ? Uncalled, may not the spirit rise, As erst the spell-bound prophet's came ? Enough : the grave alone can tell How fare the tenants of its cell, And they who sleep or dream below, Its secret realms alone may know. But this they say, that human eye Oft sees a maiden form go by, When death or sorrow hangs its pall Around Colalto's guilty hall. When danger haunts the bloody chase, That form outstrips the courser's pace ; By night, by day, that form is still The shadow of some coming ill ; And, ever robed in virgin white, 276 POEMS. With marble smile and eye of light, Hath been, through all its wav'ring state, The herald of Colalto's fate. Time hath not blanched a single hair Of those which made that brow more fair ; Not years on years have taught to die The lustre of that fadeless eye ! Of her who spake that maiden's doom, They know not now the mouldered tomb, Nor seek they in what unseen shade Her children's children's bones are laid ; But when, at twilight's dreamy hour, The huntsman spurs his lagging steed To cross Colalto's haunted mead Ere ghostlier still the shadows low'r, If rustles by the evening air, To Mary's throne he lifts his prayer, That she who rules the twilight grove Will shield him with a mother's love ; Or crosses fervently his breast, As o'er his path dim visions roll, That He, who gives the weary rest, Will calm that maiden's troubled soul. POEMS. 277 IN FORT WARREN. The anchors are weighed, and the gates of your prison Fall wide, as your ship gives her prow to the foam, And a few hurried hours shall return you, exulting, Where the flag you have fought for floats over your home. God send that not long may its folds be uplifted O'er fields dark and sad with the trail of the fight ; God give it the triumph He always hath given, Or sooner or later, to Valor and Right ! But if Peace may not yet wreathe your brows with her olive, And new victims are still round her altar to bleed, God shield you amid the red bolts of the battle, God give you stout hearts for high thought and brave deed ! No need we should bid you go strike for your freedom Ye have stricken, like men, for its blessings, before ; And your homes and your loved ones, your wrongs and your manhood, Will nerve you to fight the good fight, o'er and o'er ! But will ye not think, as ye wave your glad banners, How the flag of Old Maryland, trodden in shame, Lies, sullied and torn, in the dust of her highways, And will ye not strike a fresh blow in her name ? 36 278 POEMS. Her mothers have sent their first-born to be with you, Wherever with blood there are fields to be won ; Her daughters have wept for you, clad you, and nursed you, Their hopes, and their vows, and their smiles, are your own ! Let her cause be your cause, and whenever the war-cry Bids you rush to the field, oh ! remember her too ; And when Freedom and Peace shall be blended in Glory, Oh ! count it your shame, if she be not with you ! And if, in the hour when pride, honor, and duty Shall stir every throb in the hearts of brave men, The wrongs of the helpless can quicken such pulses, Let the captives at Warren give flame to them then ! WORSHIP. 'Tis not in anthems that from builded fanes Go up with smoke of incense ; in the wail Of sorrow, or repentance, nor the cry Of supplicating anguish not in all The prayers that living lips can syllable, Nor in the throb of adoration mute, That stirs the breathless spirit on the shore Of the lone ocean, or when midnight's stars Slow swing their ceaseless censers, or the flowers And seasons lift our hearts to Him whose hand POEMS. 279 Hath wreathed them all with beauty not alone In these or all of these, dwells there or speaks The true, deep soul of worship ! Far, between The God who made us and ourselves, there lie Eternal depths of distance. Sad and ill It were to bear, were there divinity No nearer to us ! were the Patriarch's dream Of steps of light that climbed from earth to sky, With angels gliding o'er them, but a mist Shaped by the brain of slumber ! Nay there is Divinity about us, and our earth Hath, in some mortal shapes that walk it with us, Creatures so full of Heav'n that prayer to them Cannot be all idolatry ! They fill The shrine they wake the worship, and it soars To where they stooped from. Unto them, we bow The head in rev'rence, as Religion bends When holiest names are uttered. On their souls The shade of frailty seems to have been flung But that they might not be too bright to bless The upturned eyes of love. To them the clay Is but the robe of beauty, as the cloud That blushes in the dawn, or crimsons o'er The sunset, or sends forth the flashing storm, Is but the earth-wove mantle that the skies Wear for our joy and wonder ! 280 POEMS. DREAMS. YOUTH. I will to rest, for though the morn and all The starry prodigals are flinging down Their silver on the night, and all we see Is bright, and soft, and peaceful, yet to me Far dearer are my dreams ! Oh blessed gift, From God to his loved children, that whene'er Life's load is heavy on them, and the shade Of waking woe is dark upon their souls, There is a fairy garden in the realm Of sleep, which they may seek, and there, amid The blossoms of sweet flowers, the lulling flow Of ceaseless fountains, and the siren chant Of many-colored birds, may lay them down And feel that life hath rest ! AGE. Alas, Alas ! How is the eye of youth a glorious prism, Through which plain light falls beautiful ! To me There is no charm in dreams. I can recall The night when, to my childhood's pillow, came Green visions of the fields at early morn, With dew and flower and fragrance when I heard In sleep, the voices of companions near, POEMS. 281 That bade me wake to sport, and when my heart Would quicken its weak beatings, as I saw The charms that lit the morrow's fancied hours ! There was a change. The forms that flitted round My couch were those of friends, or, brighter still, Of those that I had learned to love, and then Sleep's hours were peopled with more burning thoughts, But not less joyous. Life then looked, in dreams, As to a traveller, from a new-reached hill, Glow the glad lands before him. All was near. Soft hands were beckoning onwards ; glancing eyes Flashed on the paths I followed, and there swelled A larger, warmer being in my veins, Till life was one fierce ecstasy ! There came Another change. The visions of the night Though gorgeous still, did seem to lead me on With ruder and more anxious hand, and though My way was onward, and obstruction fell Before my touch, and still, as erst, my step Was proud scorn had locked hands with pride More heavily the birds did flit around And o'er my path, with all the jewelled plumes Fall'n from their wings. The earth was green, as yet, And flowers still bloomed, but they had parted, too, With their old fragrance. There was dust on all The things I saw the dust of strife and toil The breezes that had fanned me in the morn, Were tempests now, and death was in their sweep ! Thus passed I on, until, by slow degrees, In sleep's still landscape shade by shade began 282 POEMS. To glide across the fields. The flowers did droop, And the grass withered ; nor could I distil One balmy drop, save from the precious Past. Then, as, in childhood's dreams, the Future sate Upon a starry throne and bade me come ; As, in my manhood's slumber, there abode The eternal Present only so the Past Gave all its life to sleep. I felt, that though The fruit was heavy on the limb, yet there The leaf grew yellow by it, and the tree Had lost the charm it wore when it was red With bee-sipped blossoms ! Tell me not of dreams ! They are the sport of him who hath not known The changes of his state. They are the song Of him who hath not heard the requiem sound O'er all that he loved best. They are the bow Of promise to the eye which hath not seen The sunshine from the bosom of life's cloud Go fading, till the shadows made its tomb ! Speak not of dreams ! No dreams, no dreams for me ! POEMS. 283 LIFE. Antonio. Then, why, my Lord, I prithee tell me, dost thou frown at life, Its joys, its hopes? Why dost thou scoff at all The brightness of its raiment, and with life Compressed in most contemptuous bitterness, So scorn the happiness that blooms around Its devious pathway ? Surely, though its cup Be not all sweetness, few there are, meseems, Who may not drink from it a nectared draught ; The toil-wrung hind the very slave may learn It hath some cordial drops for his poor heart Then how, my Lord, dost thou, so doubly girt With earth's most costly blessings, find it in thee, To turn thy spirit from them, veiling it In this so black and causeless melancholy ? Carlos. Thou speak'st of that thou know'st not. Cause there is For all who ponder on the breath they draw, To fling light-hearted laughter from their lips, No more to play there. Midnight, now, it is, And yonder rides the mild autumnal moon, Without! a cloud upon her lustrous brow Dost thou believe my heart so cold, that thence The pulses leap not wildly, when I see 284 POEMS. So mirrored there eternal love and power ? Too warm, alas, the current springs, to fill Each thrilling vein ! but, chilled again, shrinks back When I do mind me of the wretched dust, They say yon splendor beams for ! What a world, And what a Heaven, for what a paltry worm ! Antonio. Nay, chafe not thus, but rather let thine age Go revelling o'er the Paradise whose sheen Is glorious around ! The hand that laid Each shadow and each blaze of this fair light, So wondrously, on such a wondrous world, Did it not frame a meet inhabitant For this so goodly mansion ? Out on thee ! That thou would'st drag the withered leaves to sight And hide the blossom and the fruit of life ! Carlos. Speak not of withered leaves ! At this lone hour, When silence hath his finger on the lips Of Earth and all the earth-born, as I list Where from yon tree, whose dappled foliage gleams, Half sere, half verdant, in the doubtful light, Drops rustling, here and there, the frequent leaf The thought comes o'er me, that this gloomy time Is but the image of my life-time's hour ; And I remember me of all who now, Have fallen, withered, from the tree of fate, And left me lonely. Antonio. Is it wise, my Lord, To dwell in sorrow, for that Death hath pierced POEMS. 285 Loved hearts ere thine ? Nay, nay, if life be full, As thou wouldst deem it, of o'erwhelming woes, 'Twould seem a kindness, that his iron hand Should snatch us from them. Carlos. Kindness, sure, to leave In solitude of anguish, those that weep A portion of their better being gone To burst, at brightest and most festive hours, Into the glowing chambers of the breast, And leave them cold and tenantless ! Nay more And worse while, thus, the good and true Are, like the topmost flowers, the first that fade, Are there not left enough, of these with whom Communion would bring loathing, to be round Our troubled way and ever some, to whom The tendrils of our hope have learned to cling But to be blasted ? Kindness this, that makes Death and the terrible dark doubts beyond Come welcome as his slumbers to the slave ! Antonio. I'll not dispute with thee, that life is all One day of sunshine. It hath clouds, as hath The fairest child of summer, but why make it E'en worse than winter, ceaseless in its storms ? If thou wouldst live for happiness, then turn Thine eye upon life's brightness, as the gaze Of the proud eagle ever seeks the sun, Nor heeds the mists that flit before his wing. I will not mind thee of the threads of gold 37 286 POEMS. Fate yet might spin thee, were her rolling wheel Urged on with hopeful hand. Yet answer me ! In youth's untroubled spring-time, even when The storms of manhood's summer rolled about thee Hadst then not those nay, shrink not was there one The unyielding marble of whose truth did speak Heaven's music to thy love, as Memnon's lips Blushed into harmony at morning's gaze ? Say this is past yet has thy heart forgot The bliss that warmed it then ? E'en now, its glow Gives mem'ry life ! Carlos. True, true ! Behold enough To make thee weep the folly of thy frowns To wipe away the blot which pain hath thrown On life's succeeding page ! A single star, Seen though it be far as the walls of Heaven, Will make night beautiful to him whose eye Looks out for beauty ! One remembered joy, How will it turn a wilderness to bloom ! ' 'arlos. Alas, Antonio, there is little cure In memory. 'Tis but an ancient lute Whose strings are broken, or, unbroken, yield How poor a melody for that which erst Rang thrilling o'er them. I have turned to fame, To wealth and power and beauty, but I have Grown old vain-seeking happiness, and all Comes with an empty sound upon mine ear. And for the dreams the phantoms memory raises POEMS. 287 So cold, so fleshlcss arc they, and each points Its Parthian arrow with so dread an aim God grant there were no seer to bid them rise ! Antonio. Has Heaven not made thec with a mind that, firm In its unbending reason, dares to soar Above the trembling empire of the heart ? Art thou so weak, that every woe will bend Thy spirit as the breezes toss the light And pensile willow ? Thou, who art a man, Shouldst wear thy manhood as a hardness round thee, And smile at sorrow, as at outward harm ! Carlos. Why call'st thou me a man, and yet wouldst have Me fling my nature, callous, in the dust, And bear me, as the brute, whom God hath made Unreasoning, unfeeling, void of all That is humanity's best grace ? For me, The thing that thou wouldst call philosopher Is but a brute of his own making worse In that he hath vain speech to boast him of His brutish art, and pride, to let me know How one made with some sparks of Heaven within him Hath striven to be, altogether, clay ! Antonio. This is thy nature's weakness, not its strength, Its godlike portion that thou shouldst fall down Before thy sorrows, as the traveller falls, In the far Eastern desert, when the wild Sand-cloud flits fire-winged o'er him. There are springs 288 POEMS. Where life's sad pilgrims in its saddest wilds May pause, and rest, and drink. To me, as thee, Life hath not been a garden all of flowers, But curst with weeds enough ; yet I adore Deeply, though darkly, Him whose master-hand Hath framed the chequered fabric of our fate ! And though, in everything, this tear-dimmed eye See not His wisdom nor His goodness shine, Yet, of their Heaven-blent union, everywhere, One instant doubt I not. I cannot curb The thoughts that spring within me, yet I feel, And trust, and hear as thou canst do, my Lord, If that thou wilt till silent suffering yields A harvest of most unrepining peace. Go see the wild once desert, blooming now Where, in thy memory, desolation sat, A voiceless queen ! Some solitary bird Upon its barren bosom did let fall The seed of bright flowers, from her passing beak- Now all is beautiful, where all was waste ! So time will scatter fruit and fragrance o'er The wildest solitude of heart and thus, As violets spread their perfume by our graves, Will there spring up a sweetness from thy woe, Will turn it half to happiness. POEMS. 289 CHRISTMAS. On the Swiss mountains, when I wandered there, In the wild, awful passes, all alone, A little cross of iron, cold and bare, Rose, oft, before me, from some wayside stone. Strange, uncouth names they bore a holy sign Traced by rude hands upon a rustic scroll, And, blotted by the snows, a piteous line, Begging our prayers for the poor sleeper's soul. Some traveller it was, perchance, whose doom The torrent or the avalanche had sped ; Mayhap was buried there some peasant, whom The hunted chamois o'er the cliff had led. His simple thoughts had never crossed the sea, From whose far borders to his grave I came, Yet, as a brother, called he unto me, And my heart's echo gave him back the name ! Peace to thy spirit, Brother ! I had felt The quick'ning of the blood that wanderers feel, At thought of home and country. I had knelt At altars where the nations came to kneel But knew I never, in its depth, till when Thy lonely shrine besought me for my prayer, The sense of kindred with all sons of men One love, one hope, God's pity everywhere ! 290 POEMS. And so thy scroll, thou gentle Christmas-tide, Reared on the cross, high o'er the wastes of time, Speaks to earth's pilgrims, in His name who died, Good will and peace and brotherhood sublime ! And, unto them that hail thee, chiefly worth Are the glad wreaths thou twiuest round the year, For that thou bidd'st our kindled hearts go forth, Wherever love can warm or kindness cheer. Up the bleak heights of daily toil we press, Too busy, with our journey and our load, To heed the hurried grasp, the brief caress, The brother fainting on that weary road. Then, welcome be the hours and thoughts and things, That win us from ourselves, a little while, To that sweet human fellowship, which brings The only human joy unstained of guile ! CHRISTMAS 1851. As, o'er Judea's lonely world, The Magi bore their gifts of gold To Bethlehem, from afar, Above the midnight path, there shone Slow-guiding to the manger, on, A dim receding star ! POEMS. 291 There came, that night, no starry ray To where the watching shepherds lay, But unto them was given, With brow of light, and accents mild, To tell them of the new-born child, A messenger from Heaven ! 'Twas strange that tidings, uttered then, Alike for all the sons of men, Should take such varying guise : Here music on an angel's tongue And there the midnight clouds among, Star-written on the skies ! Without the star-taught wizard's lore, Without the gold and gems he bore, 'Tis mine, alas ! to see Few, pale, and sad the distant rays, The only guides to better days, Sent down from Heaven to me ! Too far and cold to lead or bless, Too few to light the wilderness O'er which my path has lain They fade, like lamps that, waning, keep The watches of a sick man's sleep, Who only wakes to pain ! And, if an angel's form hath cast A glory round me, as it passed, 292 POEMS. And, ere it soared away, I've sprung to catch its raiment bright, I have but clutched the pall of night The Seraph would not stay ! Would God ! Would God ! that I could fail To read, in Bethlehem's holy tale, The sorrow that it brings I would not make my star so dim, And joyfully would catch the hymn That any angel sings ! CHRISTMAS EVE AT SEA. 'Tis not thy wont, sweet festive Eve, To come, with sunshine on thy brow ; For frozen hands thy raiment weave, And bind thy greenest wreaths with snow. Yet never, in thy chillest guise, So cheerless hast thou been to me, As now, that I behold thee rise, Here, on the wild and lonely sea. Yet, though more dark the frowning sky Should hang upon the solemn deep Though wildest were the revelry The rushing blasts of winter keep POEMS. 293 All heedless still, of wave and storm, The pilgrim's heart would beat full high, If, of the host he loves, one form, One heart, one hand, one smile, were nigh. Bring him the hearth around whose blaze His household gods give back the light ; Breathe in his ear the mirth that plays In happy echoes, there, to-night. Show him the haunts where two or three The festive midnight meet to bless ; The quiet chambers, where there be Dreams of the wanderer's caress ; And into stars, the night that's o'er His lonely watchiugs, shall be turned, And thy sweet incense, as of yore, E'en on the billows shall be burned. Alas ! though summoned by thine art, Around me, for brief moments, come Visions so life-like that I start, And wonder if it be not home. 'Tis vain ! all vain ! for round me roll The self-same solemn waters, still, The same sad skies brood o'er my soul, The same wild breezes mock my will ! 38 294 POEMS. Yet, thou art welcome ! for there grow Such blooming memories round thine hours, That dark must be the wave of woe Thy coming cannot crest with flowers. And so, I bless thee, for the Past, Whose brightest moments have been thine, From childhood's playthings, to the last Warm pledges in the Christmas wine ! And still more fondly will I greet Thy next glad coming, if that then The pilgrim's sandals shall be off my feet The staff laid down, and I at home again ! TO AN INFANT. "THE LOUD GAVE." Thou hast been born to breathe a softer air Than Fate e'er won, from kindest skies, for me, And, were there blessings waiting on my prayer, God hath no angel but should bend o'er thee ! But there's a heart, quick beating, by thy side, Whose very pulse is worship. Night and day, Unconscious, from its throbbing, upward glide Wishes too pure for Heaven to turn away. POEMS. 295 No vows on high then need's! thou for thy weal, Nor in this lower world a shield. Thy life Hath only love to wait on it. The wheel That, for the most of us, o'er toil and strife Rolls its sad round, for thee can scarcely turn From good, except to better. For the sake Of her who bore thee, many a heart will yearn, Though thou shalt know it not, from thee to take Thy burden and to bear it. For the love Of him thou shalt call father, many a hand The stones and thorns from out thy path shall move, And hopes, like sentinels, shall round it stand. Joy be thy welcome then ! and for the woes That, on the best beloved and the best, Fall when and wherefore not the wisest knows, Nor, knowing, could overmaster let them rest Until their hour shall come. The cup of earth Hath not pearls melted, alway, in its wine ; And happier, thou, than child of mortal birth, If bitterness be not the most of thine. But that thou cau'st not rule. It is for Fate To mix the draught we quaff it, as we can. Drink of it, humbly, if she pledge thee great ; But, great or humble drain it like a man ! 296 POEMS. "AND THE LORD HATH TAKEN AWAY." I turn the vacant pages o'er and o'er, And fain would read them, but my eyes grow dim, And thought and heavy heart go back to him So wearily, that I can strive no more. I see him now, as when he climbed my knee, But yesternight, and round me played and clung I hear the little busy merry tongue Lisping the winsome music of his glee ; And, as a garden sunbeam, dewy-bright, I feel the glow upon me, of the smile That kissed his innocent sweet lips, the while He bade me, as he went, his glad Good Night ! Was it forever ? When the shadows fall To-morrow and to-morrow desolate Around the silent hearth-stone shall we wait, Vain listening his light footstep in the hall ? From out the midnight voices seem to say Life's star was setting when it seemed to rise, And what we thought its brightness in the skies Was but its blending with the perfect day ! When thou didst come among us, all unknown, I gave thee welcome for thy parents' sake, Nor dreamed, fair child ! how soon there should awake Longings and griefs within me for thine own. POEMS. 297 Yet, as, from day to clay, their opening flowers Beauty and hope about thy brow entwined, And, from the roseate dawning of thy mind, Love walked with thought adown the kindling hours, Till every grace I saw upon thee grow Was so made up with tenderness and mirth, So full of joy and gentleness, that earth Knew not its part in thee, 'twas brightened so I could but bless thee. Hearts unfilled will crave The bliss they may not covet, and the grief Is mine, not borrowed, now, that span so brief Was all betwixt thy cradle and thy grave. Good Night, my gentle boy ! No dream of pain Or sin or haunting sorrow waits on thee Thou art set free from thy captivity, Without one memory of its broken chain. Good Night, and to thy rest ! There will be tears Shed over the first-born, and there will cleave Unto the bruised hearts thou seem'st to leave, The anguish of the love that bleeds and bears. But yet not always. In their lonely home Tidings shall be, as from the dead that sleep ; And a child's whisper, when they else would weep, Shall breathe the message " Suffer him to come ! " 298 POEMS. MEMNON. When soft, on Memnou's lips, of old, The sunset's fading glory fell, Though answering music from them rolled, 'Twas but the sighing of farewell : If ever from the radiant stone The notes of love and rapture broke, 'Twas morning's blessed beam alone, The wild, impassioned song that woke. Though 'tis not mine, as yet, to know The dimness of the waning day, Nor quite forgotten is the glow That purpled o'er my morning way, Yet, even when my soul is stirred By what were ecstasy before, The calmer hope and colder word Now catch the olden flush no more. 'Tis strange it may be sad to see, And 'tis, to feel I know not why There were no beauty on the lea, Were there no changes in the sky ; And though my heart, like Memnon's tongue, Wakes not at noon its morning strain, There's music in it, yet unsung, Will greet the light it loves again ! POEMS. 299 GOD'S ACRE FRIEDHOF. Though I may long and hope, nay, fondly trust Yet know I not that Heaven will deign to keep, Round the sin-tainted field of human dust, Merciful watchiugs over all that sleep. Nor know I when the waking hour shall be, Nor what shall dazzle the rekindled eye, When the rent veil of the grave's mystery Hideth no more the life that may not die. But, humbly, this at least, meseems I know, That, when the clod shall lie upon my breast, Though there be lonely truce to joy and woe, Yet, lacking both, I still shall be at rest. Then, by the lowlier name be mine to call The silent spot where toil and yearning cease ; I pray it be God's Acre unto all, Blest, if to me it be the Vale of Peace ! STARLIGHT. Glad watching his, who, when he turns Unto the kindled lights of even, By every star that o'er him burns Sees but a nearer path to Heaven ! 300 POEMS. Poor dweller in the valley, he To whom the midnight tells no story, Save of dark distances that be Betwixt him and its fields of glory ! Ah ! blessed orbs ! shall I not gaze, Some time, upon the blue above me, And catching in your dewy rays The tenderness of eyes that love me, Feel that the skies are near indeed, When creatures good and bright beside us, Part of the Heaven to which they lead, Will share it with us, as they guide us ! QUO FATA TRAHUNT. Have I not flung away already more Of hope, and love, and anxious heart, and peace, On thought of others ten times o'er and o'er Than I have left ? And should not such things cease ? Oh ! God that made me ! wherefore formed was I, So full of things opposed, so clear to see Behind each folly, pain, its shadow, lie, Yet sure to walk just where the shadows be? Who hath had teachings more than I have had ? Who, for such lessons, hath a sense more keen ? Who hath had more of grief from what was sad, Or turned, more fated, back to what had been ? POEMS. 301 Is it my sin, or shame, that I do tread, In spite of knowledge, paths of pain foregone ? Or hath some judgment fallen on my head, That I shall see, and know, and yet go on ? FOR AN ALBUM. The fairy scene the painter's hand Here spreads before the eye, Speaks loudly to us of the land Where life's strange travels lie. Here, coldly see the hill-top gleam Where fame and fortune climb ; There, humbly sings the glowing stream Its lowly, cheerful chime ! The woodland king, here, spreads his arms, In pride of leafy power, And there, as lifelike, blush the charms Of yonder peasant flower. And mark ye not what o'er them throws The joyous smile they wear, Without whose kissing, tree and rose Would vainly woo the air ? 39 302 POEMS. It is the glorious sunlight's ray That blesses wood and cloud, The streamlet near, and, far away Hallows the mountain proud ! So rays there are, without whose glow, The field of human fate, Alike its hills, and valleys low Are cold, sad, desolate. It is the sunshine of the heart, And he, who reads aright, Will find this holy lesson start From every flash of light. Treasures are wealth and wit and power, And beauty and renown ; In wisdom's scale, one heart-warm hour Would weigh a worldful down ! FOR AN ALBUM. Behold ! where, borne on gilded wing, Yon fair and fluttering insect thing Flies to the open flow'r ; Blind to the future as the past, Resolved, while sweets and sunshine last, To revel through its hour. POEMS. 303 'Tis not for me, the moral old, By saints and sages better told, From this poor insect's lot ; How that, with all its purple gone, The beauty which at morning shone, At even-tide is not. With gayer faith, the poet deems It is not ill, to love our dreams Of brightness and of bloom That blossoms would not hang so fair, That fragrance would not load the air, Were life all meant for gloom ! So too, he thinks yon silly fly May not, all useless, flutter by To those who see aright ; And that a life amid the flowers, May, longer than the moth's, be ours, More happy, not less bright ! It is that through our live-long day, We should, unyielding, wing our way, By no false brightness led, And only give our pinions rest, When lighted on the fragrant breast Of buds from pure earth fed. Not dazzling here and flitting there, Our pride to glisten everywhere, Mid noon-day's gaudy crowd ; 304 POEMS. But ever seeking fresh to sip The dew whose sweets will cool the lip, Alike in glare and cloud. The insect on our page must die, Because the bud he flutters nigh Is cut from parent bough ! And though its painted bosom gleam, In spite of nature's brightest beam, The blight is on it now ! Then let us ne'er life's blossoms prize, Because their beauty lures our eyes ; But rather be our art, To tend alone the flow'rs that blow On healthful stems that greenly glow, Unsevered from the heart ! DEJECTION. Oh God ! to see the swelling stream Of happiness roll on To count the blessed barks, that gleam In morning's flush and evening's beam, Each on its journey gone ; And feel that, by the lonely shore, Mine creeps, a laggard, still, POEMS. 305 While not a breeze that blew of yore Comes back, with freshness, as before, Its drooping sails to fill ! Oh say not to me, to deride, That, of that better day, In waste, in passion, or in pride, Unmindful of the fleeting tide, I flung the hours away ! Not mine the weakness or the sin Of golden chances spurned To toil and hope is not to win ; We end not all that we begin, Nor gather all we've earned ! There's not a poisoned seed we sow, Of folly or of crime, But, surely, will to rankness grow, And bear its certain fruit of woe, In its appointed time : But, from the germs of better things We planted in our youth, How few the flowers that Summer flings, How rare the fruit that Autumn brings, To bless our trust and truth ! Men hold it ill, at Fate to rail, When all is ruled by Heaven ; But when, e'en at our best, we fail, And, trim we as we will our sail, On rocks and shoals we're driven 306 POEMS. Though we may feel 'tis Heaven's high plan, And bend beneath our lot, Yet, if we be no more than man, Resigned we may be, if we can, Contented we are not ! TO A FRIEND. Oh ! say not that the hearts we leave Are but a transient home, Or that to them our memories Will, but as shadows, come ; Nor tell me, tears for broken ties Shall always dim the mindful eyes Of those who loved us here ; Nor that oblivion's chaunt should be Our requiem for eternity, Lest hate, rememb'ring, sneer. Small need there is, I own, to try The human hearts we have, Their tenderness aud truth, upon The touchstone of the grave ! Falsehood but mocks us, if she pass Before our pallid lips the glass, To watch if breath be there; POEMS. 307 When, of the years that blithest roll, Each writes some record on the soul Of vows that turned to air ! Yet, such things are, as faith and truth, And hearts wherein they dwell And, if the living love such homes, Why not the dead as well ? If sin and woe no cloud can throw On living love's unchanging brow, Why need it be o'ercast When we can wound and vex no more, And time and death have mantled o'er, All but the bright things past ? The grief that awful parting wakes Shall not for e'er abide ; But 'tis not those who most forget, Whose tears are soonest dried. The tenderest heart is oft'nest glad : Fond memory, not forever sad, May muse, yet wear no frown : Love passeth not away, with pain The dew may fade, yet still remain The Heaven that sent it down ! No transient home is that, which love Makes holy with its ray ; Life's bounded moments are not all That measure memory's day ! 308 POEMS. There is a sphere above the sun, Where noon and night unsevered run, And darkness never lowers ; There, with no shadow on its face, Save that eternal day-beams trace, Love's dial counts its hours ! Then let me live, if live I may, In hearts I leave behind And, if I may not fill the heart, Oh let me fill the mind ! If love be mine, I ask not praise : If love must die, then let me raise Some stone to bear my name So high above oblivion's hand, That even they who sneering stand, Shall feel and own 'tis fame ! Vain words ! Ambition's idle dreams And hopes have fleeted by, And time hath taught that glory's light Shines not for such as I ! But welcome is the nameless lot, If kindly thoughts forsake it not ; And blest th' inglorious doom, If but the few whose smiles I knew, With olden memories bestrew The else-forgotten tomb ! POEMS. 309 TO THE SAME. Live we in the present ever ? Rules the Spring the tides of time ? Must our life be one endeavor To persuade ourselves that never Shall joy end beyond its prime? Though the past leaves many a token That fond hoping may be vain, And the words we've heard and spoken, And the idols we have broken, May not come to us again, Yet, to doubt shall not restore us Thought or feeling doomed to die ; And to dread to look before us, Lest a cloud, unseen, be o'er us, Is a treason to the sky. To be trembling o'er affections, When they cluster thick and kind, Greeting them with cold reflections, On the chance of indirections, Is to love with but the mind ! Every season a new glory To the poet-heart will bring ; And it is not true, the story 40 310 POEMS. That all good is transitory, Like the gladness of the Spring. Then our fancies are unruly When they whisper " Change is near ! " And we live not well or truly, But we scan our joys unduly, If we greet them but in fear. Neither man nor earth should sorrow That the flowers must pass away ; For the year will surely borrow Golden harvests for to-morrow, From the seed-time of to-day ! TO A FRIEND. We may have bliss, in after days, For life hath often plenty, And joy hath just begun its blaze When we are one-and-twenty. But with its joy, life brings its care Bright suns go down in sorrow ; The brow that's glad to-day, may wear A veil of woe to-morrow. POEMS. 311 The hands that grasp, the lips that smile, In after days deceive us ; And many a web of darkest wile The best beloved may weave us. Then, let us bid old Memory fling Her robe of jewels o'er us ; Let's pledge our life's unclouded spring With all the flowers it bore us. Dream of the chase at break of day Along the laurelled mountain, And bless the moments when we lay Cool by the noon-tide fountain. Let's think of when we watch'd the sun Go down in golden glory, And how the moonlight's magic won Our hearts to song and story ! The feast, by sportive toil made sweet, Shall spread itself before us, And fancy twine each sylvan seat With the old boughs bending o'er us. But most, when Memory backward throws Her glances, may she guide us, Unchanged, unchanging, back to those Whose hearts then beat beside us ! 312 POEMS. They happier made each happy day, And shall we not remember The friends who cheered our sunny May, E'en in our bleak December? NO MORE! A child was born, as midnight's clang Upon the heavy silence fell, And round the chamber voices rang More solemn than that awful bell : One only burden, sad, they bore " No more ! no more ! " The tears on childhood's cheek are dry, For those who watched life's opening flower, And brightly gleams, in youth's wild eye, The sunlight of hope's reigning hour. Clouds come change parting as before, Life shines no more ! Bend yonder gentle bough aside, And look ye, where, iu saddened grove, Lips beautiful in scorn, deride The humble vow ! The beam of love That gilded life's cold mountains o'er, Hath gold no more ! POEMS. 313 See where the world-worn man, alone, At tearful eve, from crowd and strife Unto his silent hearth hath gone, And poiseth there the scales of life ! The blossoms of the time of yore, Now bloom no more! And to that thoughtful hour he brings The memories of yearnings past ; He hears Ambition's failing wings, Receding, beat the distant blast ; And, high, the tempest's echoes o'er, Still rings "no more!" Ay, gather up the hope, the joy, The love, the friendships, all that gave Green paths before him to the boy, And sparkling crest to manhood's wave, While they and all the bliss they bore Return no more! Go seek ! ah, no why seek the woe That feelings wrung have always nigh ? Go crop the bitter weeds that grow Each blasted hope's cold gravestone by, And mark how sorrow's withered store Grows evermore ! Yet, though 'tis true the forms we love Cannot be always by our side, 314 POEMS. And, as along the beach we rove, Where ebbs and flows life's restless tide, We see glad barks that leave the shore Come back no more ! Still, let us feel that though, awhile, Sweet hours, sweet friends sail down the stream, There is a far but joyous isle Where turns to truth hope's wildest dream, And, reaching those who went before, We part no more ! Thus thought the failing, gray-haired man, And dropped his staff, one autumn day ; Joy flashed across his visage wan, As those old voices, now grown gay, This altered burden chanted o'er : " Sorrow no more ! " THE CURFEW. Ah why, when life's dim eve comes on, Should hearts, once warm, grow cold ? And why should sighs for feeliugs gone, Make up our breath when old ? POEMS. 315 'Tis true, the happy light that fell On board and hearth, of yore, Went out when evening's tyrant bell, The Curfew's warning bore. But oh ! it is not thus the heart Should hear the voice of time ; Not thus its cheerful light depart At sound of evening's chime ! For me, kind fate ! forbid that e'er That dismal tocsin toll, In whose sad discord I shall hear The curfew of the soul ! MIDNIGHT. Ah ! now at last, with tears, I own Far happier were our lot, If we could wander on, alone, Forgetting and forgot. The thrill of joy that others feel, When full our blessings flow The heart, that kindles at our weal, And saddens in our woe 316 POEMS. The fresh, warm glow of sympathy That for our bliss is given, To gild our clay-born destiny With radiance lit in Heaven All these may teach as they have taught That as life's waves we press, The blithest bark bounds on for nought, That sails in loneliness ! But yet, to feel that Fate may wind Our thread of life round those Who make our union with our kind A talisman of woes ; That when, before our gladdening eyes, Life's broadest fields grow green, Another's voice may bid arise Some blinding mist between ; That not a moment may fleet on, Without some sound of sorrow ; Sad yesterday's prophetic tone Suggesting sad to-morrow ! And, worse than all, when duty stern Bids the wrung heart be still, Though memory cannot break her urn Nor dry its bitter rill : POEMS. 317 When love has ceased, we thought would flow Till time should waste its wave, A nd trust 's forgot, that should not know Oblivion in the grave These, these are pains not all the bliss Of sympathy can cure ; And to be rid of life like this, What might we not endure ? To fly from these, we might forego The grasp the fond embrace, And, rather than this madness know, Know never Joy's bright face. Oh God ! Oh God ! let not thy wrath So cloud my vision o'er, That finding midnight round my path, I look for light no more ! THE FOUNT. When by the margin of the stream, The traveller rests him on his way, 'Tis not to watch the dancing beam, Or catch the glitter of the spray ; 41 318 POEMS. And if, unto his fainting lip, The fresh bright waters cooling bring, Why should he pause before he sip, Or curse it for a worthless thing ? Or why, with loathing, should he start Because there 's earth beneath the tide, When all the life that warms his heart Is the same clay, scarce purified ? Oh spurn not then the stream of love, Because the earth looks dark below ! Content thee with the skies above, In whose warm blaze the ripples glow ! And bless thee for the kindly fate, Which to thy pilgrim soul hath given A fount its purest thirst to sate, Which springs from earth, but mirrors Heaven TO I cherish yet this lifeless flower : 'Twas bright and fresh, with bloom like thine, When thy soft hand in thoughtless hour, Half flung it, careless, into mine ! POEMS. 319 There was no glance from thee that threw A single beam upon my way ; No word from whose sweet tone I drew Just presage of a happier day ; Yet 'twas thy gift, and cold and few As were to me hope's fitful gleams, At thought of thee bursts forth anew The radiance of my brightest dreams ! I kept the flower, 'tis faded now, And, fading like it, droop and fall, As blossoms from a blasted bough, My future's trust, my dreams, my all ! These withered leaves there is no spell Their beauty's blush can e'er restore, Sweet lady, pardon ! thou canst tell, If hope for me shall bloom no more ! TO More dark than winter's darkest cloud, Compared with purity like thine, The sin whose daily shadows shroud Poor, tempted, toilsome lives like mine! 320 POEMS. Though in my better moments rise Thoughts, feelings, hopes of holier aim, Too oft like meteors from the skies They flash, fall, vanish as they came ! Dear lady, then, in happy time, Was that sweet promise breathed by thee That with thy vows a prayer should climb And ask a boon from Heav'n for me. 'Tis said that when His Angels sue, The Merciful bends down His ear : Sweet lady, if the tale be true, What blessings wait upon thy prayer ! TO 'Twas ill enough the pang to know Of absence, distance, hope repress'd, Before a doubt had come to throw New shadows o'er my clouded breast. I felt that Time, too swift till then, Must linger long on laggard wing, Ere thy sweet smile could beam again Upon me in the gladsome spring. POEMS. 321 And, knowing that earth's hopes must wait Upon a will they cannot bend, I trembled at the thought that Fate That happy hour might never send. Yet I was blest that, come what might, No absence, distance, change, delay, Could dim the faith that, pure and bright, Lit up thy heart with perfect day. And though there came not to mine ear The music of thy gentle voice, Kind words might make the distant near, And I might read them and rejoice. It is not thus not thus, that now I count bright things as yet in store ; Not thus recall each happy vow Our eager lips breathed o'er and o'er. Think not that I repent my trust, As rashly flung upon thy youth, For I will hold all faith as dust, Ere I will doubt me of thy truth. But, pure and gentle as thou art, Believing all things what they seem, Wilt thou not wound thine own kind heart, Ere thou wilt break another's dream ? 322 POEMS. Forbid to know how fondly dwells Each heavy thought of mine on thee ; To speed me here one thought that swells Thy soul, or dims thine eye for me ; And taught, perhaps, that, all unkind, Some word, in pain or weakness spoken, Shows feelings harsh and unrefined, Rude vows, as rudely to be broken. Ah, tell me feeling, knowing this Can I forget we are of clay ? Or weakly deem my promised bliss Will surely dawn, because it may ? Then blame me not if each sad hour Chase but a sadder brother on If spirits, joyous once, have power To wake no more sweet fancies gone. Thou know'st that thou and only thou Canst win back gladness to my side ; Can I remind thee of no vow To cherish me, whate'er betide ? POEMS. 323 TO Sweet lady ! not in jest I said That, all too bright to linger long, With youth's swift hours from me had fled My little gift of joyous song. 'Tis true 'twere folly, yet, for me To talk of weariness and woe, And feign to feel the vanity And emptiness of things below. But yet look upward as we may The dust of toil and travel flings A cloud upon the brightest day That ever rose on purple wings. And so the green earth wears not now The freshness that " lang syne " I knew ; The very beams that o'er it glow, Have robbed it of its diamond dew. And well-nigh spent, with me, the spell That wins from life one-half its sorrow, The heart which, if to-day goes well, Beats careless of the dim to-morrow ! Yet, lady ! when I look on thee, A brighter hue bright mem'ries wear Thoughts, strangers long, come back to me, And dreams, not baseless, throng the air. 324 POEMS. Ah ! then I would were mine the art That dwells in poesy alone, To echo music from my heart, Should be re-echoed from thine own ! 'Tis vain ! I kneel not near the shrine, A worshipper, as others are ; And thou wilt prize these vows of mine The more, that they are breathed from far ! A lover's lay be his, on whom The sun-beams of thy smile descend ! Mine is the happiness and doom To be, yet only be, thy friend ! ANGELS. I would not make thee angel, if I could, For I am yet content with earthly things ; And 'twere, to me, a dubious sort of good, Loving thee, as I do, to give thee wings ! I'm far enough, God knows, below thee, now, Though thou art human, yet to a degree But, were a glory set about thy brow, What in the name of Heav'n would come of me? POEMS. 325 Spirits are radiant things, no doubt, to pray And lift our hearts to, and none more than thine But that is worship merely it needs clay To link the mortal love with the divine. I love the clay, I own perhaps I have Too little of the fire Prometheus stole, And yet I can but bless the Heaven that gave The beauteous girdle which is round thy soul ! TO I smile to think there have been times, When I could write didactic rhymes To guide thy girlish hours ; When I could give thee counsels wise, And solemn morals could devise From butterflies and flowers. It seems but yesterday for thou Still wear'st, unfaded, on thy brow, The first gay wreaths of youth ; And fragrant, round thy spirit, cling The earliest blossoms of its spring, Its purity and truth ! 42 326 POEMS. Yet, though a quick, short hour it seem, It hath been long enough for dream On dream to pass away ; And best and brightest hopes of mine (Is it not so, with some of thine ?) Have come, and had their day. Yes mine have come, deceived, and gone, And others, that I look upon As boding better things, Will, likely, cheat and fade as well, That other years a tale may tell, Like that which this one brings. But 'mid the varying shapes of change, The one that seems to me most strange, Is that myself have known ; That I, who set me to impart Sage lessons how to rule thy heart, Can scarce keep whole my own ! In time of eld, when fairies trod, Beneath the moon, the dewy sod, Or thronged the woodland dells, A woful plight was his, I ween, Who saw them dancing round the green, Or heard the elfin bells. No sleep-shut eye there was, for him, No welcome rest for weary limb, Till all that night was gone j POEMS. 327 Where'er the elfin coursers neighed, Where'er the bells their music made, He followed, fated, on ! Less kind, the fairies of our days, Than those, the tiny greensward fays, Whose charm with darkness went ; For, now, alike 'neath moon and sun, The witching process once begun, Its spells are never spent ! It were not ill, that thou shouldst hold Small truce of mercy with the bold, Who onward press and dare ; But those of us who, from afar, Gaze on thee, as men watch a star, Deserve that thou shouldst spare. 'Tis not our fault that we have eyes, And, if thy soft and low replies Charm, more than music can, 'Tis in our own despite we hear, And wherefore should one pay so dear For being only man ? Sometimes the fear upon me gains, That, when fair maidens forge their chains, They reck not whom they bind ; Like Romans at the triumph's arch, They little care what captives march In pensive ranks behind ! 328 POEMS. I've heard of one who, hour by hour, In twilight grove and evening bower, Smiled when a lover wooed, Although she knew Endymion's moon Would wed him, from the skies, as soon As she to whom he sued. She would not bid him go his ways She loved his worship and his praise, Although she loved him not ; She listened, while she liked to hear, And, when it palled upon her ear, She doled him out his lot ! But, wherefore vex thy gentler mind, With tales of maidens thus unkind ? Oh, never thine such sin ! Thou wouldst have let him love away, And live in hope, some lucky day By patient praise to win. And praisi ng lo vi ng hopi ng still, His future hanging on thy will, Without one vow of thine He might have lived sweet ages o'er, And, till he asked for something more, Have felt suspense divine ! And after all most strange it were, In him who could not, patient, bear Long years of doubt, to see POEMS. 329 Though dim and far, and struggling through A darker night than chaos knew One hope of winning thee ! Such sights and hopes to them I leave, Who fancy's webs can, willing, weave, To snare themselves withal ; 'Tis mine to see with other's eyes, And, if 'twere mine to deal the prize, Thou know'st where it would fall ! But there 's no cause why thou shouldst chide, And surely none why I should hide, 'Neath cautious words and cold, The feelings kind, whose friendly glow It would be strange thou shouldst not know, Though it were left untold ! Of all the charms existence lends Youth, beauty, wit, and love, and friends There 's none thou dost not share ; Yet, though 'tis, thus, an idle thing To add so poor an offering As one sad sinner's prayer I pray that, like the Prophet's palm, Which vocal made each breeze of balm O'er Eden's bow'rs that past, Thy tree of life may, all day long, Pour forth from every leaf a song, Each sweeter than the last ! 330 POEMS. TO I've been a dreamer all my days, Yet ne'er a dream came true And 'twould be strange if I could raise A dreamland sprite for you ; You through whose common, daylight air, More gladsome visions sweep, Than other, luckiest mortals, dare To hope for e'en in sleep ! Dream as you will then brighter far Your own pure thoughts, than all The forms that round the midnight's car A wizard's wand could call ! I only beg that, not too glad Nor bright, your dreams may be ; For then the chance were very bad, That you should dream of me ! TO Along a lonely walk I strayed My thoughts far off, with doubtful things, When, o'er my path, I saw there played " A gentle bird on azure wings ! " POEMS. 331 He bent him from the heights of air Stooped to the earth, as if to light Poised him before me lingered there Then passed away like all things bright ! I watched him, till I saw him fold His wings, the distant corn among, "Where, from a stalk of bending gold, I heard him lift his happy song. I went my ways I could but feel, How often to my lot 'twas given, To see, far from my pathway, wheel The brightest messengers from Heaven ! And yet why should the bird to me Bring down the hues that clothe the sky, When o'er my path there bent no tree, In whose green bosom he could lie ? When of the fields whose treasures lay, Far o'er the glad and teeming plain, Not mine one golden sheaf, to pay The music of his gentle strain ! I could not blame him yet I thought 'Twere sad he should have come, unless His beauty and his song he'd brought, My lonely wanderings to bless ! 332 POEMS. TO I may not love thee ! though the thought, By honor's ban repressed, Unbreathed to thee, to man, to Heaven, Should moulder with my breast ! There is a faith that I should break, If, from my slumbers I should wake To bless a dream of thee ; And though to thee but common dust, As pure as thou I'll keep that trust, Betwixt my soul and me ! And yet 'tis hard thou shouldst not know What better life were mine, To worship, if but in my heart The Deity in thine ! Ah ! couldst thou feel what it has cost To teach myself that thou art lost Yet bless where thou art won, Thou wouldst not love me that is past But even thou wouldst mourn the cast That left me thus undone ! POEMS. 333 FROM CALDERON, Carlos. The morning's golden light had scarcely flung A crown upon the sun's returning brow When, unto her, from whom daylight had sprung, Mine other sun, I lifted up my vow. Scarce the night-shadows, tremulous, had hung Their gloom o'er all things but my passion's glow, When all my love, upon the garden-wold, To the fair commonwealth of flowers I told. The very silence of the evening chill, The jasmine, in sweet mazes clustering, The crystal fountain, bubbling at its will, The brook, that to itself went murmuring, The air, that on the blossoms breathed still, And o'er the shrinking leaves leapt, wandering All all was love ! What if at such an hour, There be a soul in fountain, bird, and flower ! Pasquin. There was an old and grave philosopher Who dwelt unto himself. A soldier passed His home one day, and paused to speak with him, And, after long discourse, the warrior said, " Hast thou not seen the fall, then, of our king, Whose laurels crown him Lord and Arbiter Of empires most unbounded?" Quoth the sage, 43 334 POEMS. " Is not thy king a man? What hath he then That I should gaze on him, more than on thee ? ******** Thou see'st yon blossom gather it, I pray, And bear it to thy King, and say, I bid him Make but one single, simple, flower like that ! Then may'st thou learn, that trophies, glories, fame, Triumph and victory step not beyond Our mere humanity ; since he, thy Lord, After so many conquests won, is still All impotent to frame one little flower, When every field sprouts myriads ! " La Cisma de Inglaterra. NOTES. [The following notes are the author's own, except where inclosed in brackets.] Page 255. The Blessed Hand. There is a legend of an English monk who died at the monastery of Aremberg, where he had copied and illuminated many books, hoping to be rewarded in Heaven. Long after his death his tomb was opened, and nothing could be seen of his remains but the right hand with which he had done his pious work, and which had been miracu- lously preserved from decay. [From a personal friend of Mr. Wallis we have the following account of the circumstances under which " The Blessed Hand " was written : " After the war ended, it was found that there was so much want and destitution throughout the South, as well as an entire lack of seeds and imple- ments with which to start in life, that some ladies in Baltimore conceived the idea of holding a Fair for the purpose of raising a sum of money which should be applied to relieving the great want known to be widespread throughout the South. The result was the ' Southern Relief Fair,' which proved a great success, as the expenses were almost nothing, while all found something to give for the Fair. The amount realised was about $165.000. " Among those who entered into the work of the Fair with great enthusiasm, was Mr. Wallis ; and 335 336 NOTES. soon after the opening, when he had seen the way in which the ladies worked, and how true and earnest was their desire to help those who were suffering, the legend of ' The Blessed Hand ' came to his mind, and he wrote the poem here given. He had it printed and sent to the Fair for sale. So perfectly did the lines agree with the feeling that filled every heart, and so beautiful were they in themselves, that great numbers of the printed copies were sold." ^Elfric relates a similar miracle in the case of King Oswald of Northumbria.] Page 261. The Last of the Hours. In the famous fresco, known as the Aurora, by Guido Reni, in the Rospigliosi palace at Rome, the last of the Hours the farthest from the chariot of the Sun wears a darker robe than her companions, and is the only one whose head is covered. Her face is by far the most beautiful in the group, though its expression is pensive. [Printed in the Metropolitan Magazine, September, 1857.] " 263. Truth and Reason. Fabricius, in his Bibliotheca Graeca, mentions the theory of the universe pro- pounded by Cosmas Indicopleustes, who, among other things, accounted for the motion of the heavenly bodies by the assertion that they were carried round in their orbits by celestial spirits. August 20, 1849. " 265. Beauty and Faith. " Guido was so distinguished by his passionate enthusiasm for the Madonna that he was supposed to have been favored by a particular vision which enabled him the more readily to repre- sent her divine beauty. . . . But, though he painted lovely Virgins, he went every Saturday to pray before the little black Madonna della Guardia, and, as we are assured, held this ancient Eastern relic in devout veneration." Mrs. Jameson's Legends of the Madonna. [Printed in the Metropolitan Magazine, March, 1857.] NOTES. 337 Page 267. The Exile's Prayer. In his work on the Mind, Dr. Rush maintains the fact, attested by clergymen of his acquaintance, that the aged foreigners whom they attended generally prayed on their death-beds in their native language, though in many cases they had not spoken it for fifty or sixty years. " 268. The first interment in Greenmouut Cemetery was that of an infant. 1845. " 270. [The Spectre of Colalto was contributed by Mr. Wallis to The Baltimore Book, a literary miscellany pub- lished in 1838, and edited by W. H. Carpenter and T. S. Arthur. To the poem was prefixed the fol- lowing quotation : ] " The White Lady of Avenel is not quite so good as a real well-authenticated White Lady or spectre in the Marca Trevigniana, who has been repeatedly seen. . . . She always appeared upon particular occasions, before the deaths of the family, &c. . . . She was a girl attendant, who one day, dressing the hair of a Countess of Colalto, was seen by her mis- tress to smile upon her husband, in the glass. The Countess had her shut up in the wall of the castle, like Constance de Beverley. She is described as very beautiful and fair. It is well authenticated." BYRON, Letter 463. " 277. In Fort Warren. [Lines written on the occasion of the release of several Confederate officers, fellow- prisoners of the author.] " 278. Worship. April 29, 1852. " 280. Dreams. 1836. " 283. Life. October, 1836. " 289. Christmas Eve at Sea. On board ship Argo, Decem- ber 24, 1846. " 294. "The Lord Gave" January 22, 1854. " 296. "And the Lord hath taken away." Annapolis, Janu- ary 14, 1856. " 298. Memnon. September 19, 1850. 338 NOTES. Page 299. God's Acre. The Germans call a grave-yard Gottes Acker, or " God's Acre," and Friedhof, the " Peace- yard." " 299. Starlight. September 20, 1853. " 300. Quo Fata Trahunt. January 10, 1854. " 301. For an Album. I was requested to write some verses in the album of a charming little girl. I wrote the first of the following pieces, and did not insert it, because I found on examination that there was another, by another hand, in the volume, with pretty nearly the same application of its moral. It was suggested by an engraving of a landscape in the album. " 302. For an Album. These lines, suggested by another engraving, which represented a butterfly upon a bunch of cut flowers, were returned with the volume. " 306. To a Friend. In answer to a poem written by a friend on Campbell's lines " To live in hearts we leave behind, Is not to die." October 10, 1852. " 310. To a Friend. These verses were inclosed in a letter to my friend, James \V. Miller, of New Orleans, with whom I had spent a good many very happy hours at Pigeon Hills. When the letter containing them reached New Orleans, he was dead. Sit illi terra levis! December 23, 1838. " 312. No More. Madame de Stael, I think it is, who says that the words " no more " are the sweetest in the English language. 1841. " 314. The Curfew. October 1, 1845. " 317. The Fount. An answer to the following lines in a friend's letter : "As the weary traveller draweth nigh To a spring which refresheth his longing eye, And joyfully bendeth o'er the brink Of the limpid and crystal stream to drink NOTES. 339 Yet starts to see, 'neath the wave so clear, The naked, loathsome clay appear Even so the lake of Human Love, While reflecting the tints from the sky above, Will often seem, to the distant sight, Like a pure and fathomless sea of light ; Yet the ripples dance in fantastic wreath O'er the shoals of selfishness hid beneath." August 21, 1849. Jlti*